Hoax Museum Blog: Celebrities

The Great Death Rumor Craze of 2009: An Analysis — The glut of celebrity death hoaxes during the past week has been a textbook case of how rumors spread. It's a great example of collective behavior in action. As such, the death rumors provide an opportunity for journalists to discuss some of the things scholars have learned about the spread of rumors during the past fifty years of research. Unfortunately, the insights of social psychologists don't seem to be getting much coverage. Instead, journalists are focusing on the rumors as an internet phenomenon. See this CNN article as an example. It warns us that:

The situation is calling attention to the changing state of the news media: As information online moves faster and comes from more sources, it's more difficult to verify what's true and what may be shockingly false...
Others say the fake deaths, or "death pranks," show an inherent problem with the decentralization of news on the Internet.

This seems like a non-issue to me. Rumors are an ancient phenomenon. The internet is simply the technology people are using to communicate them nowadays. And while the internet does allow information to spread faster, from more sources, it also allows misinformation to be debunked faster. Before the internet people found many other 'decentralized' ways of spreading rumors: fax, telephone, college radio stations, letters, corner drugstores, or word of mouth. The technology has changed, but human behavior remains the same.

If I were a journalist, these are some of the points about rumors I would try to highlight:
  • Rumors spread most during situations that are confusing or ambiguous and in which there's a mood of collective excitement. People want more information, and that information isn't available. So they look to alternative sources.
  • There are always alternative sources of information. The supply of information is never centralized. Social groups (such as teenagers) tend to establish their own communication networks, and they'll turn to those if they're not getting what they want from mainstream sources. In 1969, when the Paul is Dead rumor was spreading, young people relied on college radio and college newspapers to spread the rumor. Today they rely on twitter.
  • Rumors don't spread randomly. Instead, they tend to follow along social lines. The recent rumors have spread among young people using twitter.
  • Status seeking is an important motive in why people spread these rumors. Being able to pass along new information makes people feel important in the eyes of their friends, even if the information later turns out to be bogus. Similarly, pranksters like to make up these hoaxes to gain approval from their social groups.
  • Rumors often serve as a form of entertainment and emotional release. It gives people a way to project their anxieties onto the world. In fact, rumors often spread without being believed, which seems to be the case with the recent death hoaxes. An Australian news station fell for the Jeff Goldblum rumor, but the majority of twitter users seem to have expressed doubt about the rumors as they simultaneously repeated them. Ironically, those debunking the rumors have spread them far further than have those who actually believed them.
All of these are standard observations about rumors that you can find in most social psychology textbooks. But like I said, it's not what journalists are focusing on.
Posted: Wed Jul 01, 2009.   Comments (3)

Is one of the Michael Jackson rehearsal photos faked? — Holymoly.com suggests that one of the rehearsal photographs of Michael Jackson, said to have been taken the night before he died, is fake. They point out that "the backdrop mysteriously disappears in between Michael's legs." They describe this as a "classic photoshop blunder" and suggest "this could be a fake composite, with Jackson's image being super imposed on top of another pic."

It does look unusual, but I wouldn't be so quick to label it as photoshopped. That may just be how the backdrop looks in that area. (You would need to see an unobstructed view of the entire backdrop to be sure.) And what would be the point of photoshopping the picture? Is holymoly.com suggesting that Jackson didn't actually attend the rehearsal? That seems unlikely as there are other pictures of Jackson at the rehearsal, and (presumably) witnesses.


Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2009.   Comments (10)

More Celebrity Death Hoaxes — It's been the week of the celebrity death hoax, triggered by the real-life deaths of a string of celebrities (Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and Billy Mays).

The recent celebrity death hoaxes have included: Jeff Goldblum, Harrison Ford, Louie Anderson, Ellen DeGeneres, Britney Spears, and Miley Cyrus.

In the case of Jeff Goldblum and Louie Anderson, the fake deaths were simply old rumors that were recycled. But in the case of Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres, and Miley Cyrus, pranksters hacked into their twitter accounts to post false death announcements.
Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009.   Comments (2)

Jeff Goldblum isn’t dead, nor is Harrison Ford — In the wake of the news of the death of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, a rumor that Jeff Goldblum had also died began to circulate. Reportedly he died when he fell off a cliff while filming a movie in New Zealand.

Then a rumor surfaced that Harrison Ford had died on board a yacht cruising off the coast of St. Tropez.

Both Ford and Goldblum are still alive. In fact, the Goldblum rumor was simply a rehash of a three-year-old rumor that originally involved Tom Hanks falling off a cliff, and later Tom Cruise.

Maegan has posted more details in the forum.

Some links:
Harrison Ford not dead either
Goldblum NZ death hoax latest in a trail 
Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009.   Comments (0)


Michael Jackson Dies… For Real — It appears that Michael Jackson has died, which is only worth mentioning here because in addition to being the "King of Pop," he was also the King of the fake death rumor. Even The Onion satirically predicted his death back in 2005. But this time, it seems to be for real.

Now the "he faked his death" rumors can start.
Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009.   Comments (10)

Does Robert Pattinson paint on his abs? — Here's a question the world needs answered: Did Robert Pattinson (star of Twilight) have makeup artists use liquid body paint to make it appear as if he had six-pack abs for a scene in the forthcoming New Moon? Well, that's the rumor.

Given that it was for a scene in a movie, I think it would be more surprising if makeup wasn't used. But for chiselled abs it's actually more important to be really skinny than to workout a lot. And the guy looks like he's genuinely skinny.
Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2009.   Comments (5)

Saudis Censor Katy Perry — Blogger Susie Of Arabia reports that after buying a copy of Katy Perry's album One of the Boys in Saudi Arabia, she realized that all the pictures of Katy Perry had been heavily doctored by Saudi censors. Below (left) is the original album cover, and on the right is the Saudi version.

This is standard practice in Saudi Arabia. A few years ago I posted about Mariah Carey album covers that were similarly doctored by the Saudis.



Susie suggests that the Katy Perry albums were individually doctored by hand, by censors armed with magic markers. She writes: "the Saudi government is actually paying religious police members of the Committee for the Protection of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CVPVP) to remove the plastic wrap from these CDs, open up the CD cases, remove the front and back inserts, and carefully and painstakingly color in with a marker any photos baring exposed female flesh that is deemed objectionable."

I really doubt that. It would take far too long. Instead, I'm almost certain that a more modest version of the cover would have been printed specifically for the Saudi market.

Of course, America has its own history of moral censorship of photos. However, in America the censors typically don't try to reclothe people who are wearing too few clothes. Instead, they remove offending details such as exposed nipples or belly buttons, creating anatomical mutants.
Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009.   Comments (15)

Lil’ Kim for Mayor — Someone circulated a bogus press release claiming that rap star Lil' Kim was running for mayor of Hoboken. Local media in New York duly reported it as fact. But in a world where Ronald Reagan became president and Arnold Schwarzenegger is Governor of California, I can understand why they took it seriously. [NY Daily News]

Posted: Mon Apr 13, 2009.   Comments (0)

Clooney-Flavored Tofu —

This brings back memories of Hufu (Human-Flavored Tofu). After coming into possession of some of George Clooney's sweat, which had soaked a gym towel he used, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk wrote to the movie actor to ask him if they could use his sweat to produce Clooney-Flavored Tofu (CloFu). She suggested it would be a way of encouraging people to eat more tofu. Clooney replied, "As a mammal, I'm offended."

I'm a bit confused whether the tofu would taste like Clooney's sweat, or would it taste like Clooney's actual flesh? Either way, it sounds unappetizing. (Thanks, Big Gary!)
Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2009.   Comments (7)

Megan Fox to play Wonder Woman? — The site wonder-who.com claims to reveal that Megan Fox will be starring in a new Wonder Woman movie. The site looks professionally made. Someone obviously put some effort into it. But according to JoBlo.com, Warner Brothers has issued a denial, insisting that no such movie is planned.

So why did someone spend so much time creating the site? I have no idea. A really over-eager Megan Fox fan perhaps? Or maybe a studio was testing the response to the concept?

Links: pfunn.com, io9.com.
Posted: Thu Nov 06, 2008.   Comments (7)

Britney Spears to play a killer lesbian stripper? — Back in January 2008 Variety published a rumor, citing unnamed sources, that Britney Spears had agreed to play a killer lesbian stripper in Quentin Tarantino's next movie, a remake of Russ Meyer's 1965 film Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.

Seven months later, there's no indication this rumor is true. For instance, there's no listing of such a project on IMDB.

Nevertheless, the rumor is circulating again. It was reported recently in The Telegraph and on popcrunch. It appears that the January rumor is simply being reported again, with no attempt to check the facts.

Taken together with the recent rumor that Spears was to star in a (nonexistent) movie titled The Knoxville Carjacking Party, it seems that there's a deep unmet desire out there to see Spears starring in a slasher movie.
Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008.   Comments (9)

The Knoxville Carjacking Party — According to internet rumor, Britney Spears is planning to star in a movie titled The Knoxville Carjacking Party, based on the brutal 2007 murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. Spears would play Channon Christian.

The story is a hoax. More specifically, it's a case of satire mistaken as news, having apparently originated as a faux news report from "celebrity snitch, Clarence Star" on the site Ghetto Bragging Rights.

Wayne Bledsoe, a columnist for Knoxnews.com, notes that the spread of the false rumor offers a case study in how misinformation is propagated by the online media. Numerous celebrity gossip sites, such as popcrunch.com, reported the false rumor as fact, without making any effort to verify it. Bledsoe writes:

By Wednesday morning, a Google search found more than 10,000 hits for "Knoxville Carjacking Party" and the rumor had been translated into Spanish and French. Not only that, but Web "reporters" often edited out the more ludicrous parts of the story, helping to make it sound more credible. Readers not familiar with the Knoxville murders simply assumed it was a new slasher film.
Some Web browsers left comments on the sites saying that the report sounded like a hoax, but others were quick to defend it. A reader at Current.com insisted: "It's not fake. I don't think so. It's all over the international scene."
The amazing thing is that out of the 10,000-plus mentions of the fictitious movie, no one had apparently contacted Spears' management or record company to check if it was real.

(Thanks, Bob!)
Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2008.   Comments (4)

Check-in Pseudonyms — Kate Beckinsale goes by "Sigourney Beaver." Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, when together, were "Mr and Mrs Ross Vegas." And Johnny Depp uses "Mr. Stench."

These are some of the check-in pseudonyms that Hollywood stars use to remain anonymous when registering at hotels.

The only time I ever use a pseudonym is when asked to fill in info for things like online surveys or grocery store cards. Then I'm always "Eric Blair." But I'm thinking of switching to Hugo N. Frye.
Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008.   Comments (23)

Ben Affleck’s Big Head — This photo of Ben Affleck is doing the rounds on celebrity gossip blogs. People are wondering if it's real or photoshopped.



It is an odd picture, but I'm almost certain it's real. Affleck just happens to be posed at a strange angle, and the small size of the kids around him make his head appear unnaturally large.

The picture comes from an event Affleck attended in Calgary on June 14 to support the oneXone charity. Wireimage.com has a gallery of photos of Affleck at this event. There are plenty of shots of him posing with these kids (including the shot above).
Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008.   Comments (12)

Marilyn Monroe Sex Tape — Marilyn Monroe seems to attract hoaxes, in the same way that Hitler, Bigfoot, and Paris Hilton do. I guess it's because any news about Marilyn is guaranteed to get attention, which is what many hoaxers are looking for.

The latest Marilyn news is that a sex tape starring her was sold for $1.5 million to an anonymous wealthy businessman, who swore he would never make it public. The tape is said to be a copy of a film that has been kept classified by the FBI.

The promise of the businessman to not market the tape sounds very noble, but nobility probably has little to do with it. The tape is probably being kept from the public because it doesn't exist.

Defamer, with the help of Marilyn Monroe expert Mark Bellinghaus, has put all the pieces of this story together. (If I'm a "hoax-pert," does that make Bellinghaus a "Monroe-xpert"?)

The key point, as Defamer argues, is that the sale to the anonymous businessman was brokered by Keya Morgan "whose main objective is to promote himself and the Monroe documentary that he is working on." Defamer argues that "What Keya Morgan is promoting equates to questionable stories generated simply to sell another book or push another cheesy documentary." Some of the questions that Defamer and Bellinghaus raise:

· The film was supposedly made of Marilyn Monroe as a starlet. If filmed in this time period of Monroe's life, why would the feds have cared about the activities of a young starlet, considering that Marilyn Monroe had not reached the heights of fame at the time this footage was claimed to have been filmed?

· "You see instantly that it's Marilyn Monroe - she has the famous mole." This is a quote by Keya Morgan, which is one of the flimsiest pieces of evidence ever presented. Just because this alleged film has a person with a mole, it's instantly Marilyn Monroe?

· Essentially Morgan is claiming that this is a bootleg copy of a classified FBI film. So if an original is classified, why would the FBI allow this public brouhaha in the press and not stop this sale from taking place? Why would this film copy not be destroyed?

Keeping key pieces of evidence hidden (such as the tape itself!) is the classic modus operandi of hoaxers. So I'm definitely with Defamer on this. It smells like a hoax.
(Thanks Bob and Joe!)

Related Posts:
Man mistakes Madonna for Monroe
The JFK-Marilyn Monroe Correspondence

Update: The Smoking Gun has conducted research that also casts doubt on Morgan's claims.
Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008.   Comments (23)

Who is Robert Irvine? — What we can say with certainty is that Robert Irvine is the host of the Food Network's show Dinner: Impossible. I've watched this before and found it entertaining. Though Irvine comes across as pretty arrogant.

However, many other facts about Irvine's career have now been called into question. For instance, in the past Irvine has claimed that he was knighted by the Queen, that he owns a castle in Scotland, that he cooked at the White House, and that he created the wedding cake for Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

None of this, it turns out, is true.

A Food Network spokeswoman says, "It's unfortunate if Robert embellished the extent of his culinary experiences. We are investigating the matter and taking the necessary steps to ensure the accuracy of all representations of Robert on Food Network and foodnetwork.com."

I'm sure that'll be the extent of the Food Network's reprimand of him, since his show is too popular to cancel.

Links: sptimes.com; Daily Mail. (Thanks to Joe Littrell for the heads up about this.)
Posted: Fri Feb 22, 2008.   Comments (6)

Man mistakes Madonna for Monroe — Everyone dreams of finding a painting by Van Gogh or Picasso in their attic. In Lawrence Nicastro's case, what he found -- so he thought -- was a rare picture of Marilyn Monroe posing as a naked hitchhiker. The BBC reports:

He and his wife Phyllis then spent four months researching the photograph. Mr Nicastro suspected it had been left by a customer at his service station in New York city in 1962. The couple brought in Monroe expert Chris Harris, who confirmed it was a genuine, exciting find. Harris scheduled a news conference to unveil the image but allowed some journalists a sneak preview. They suggested the photographic treasure was in fact a shot of Madonna from her graphic 1992 book, Sex.

This isn't a hoax, of course, unless you count that guy who called himself a Monroe expert, but couldn't tell the difference between Marilyn Monroe and Madonna. I'm no Monroe expert, but I can see the difference right away.

I found the picture of Madonna posing as a hitchhiker after a bit of googling. I'm just assuming it's the same picture that confused the expert. Click here for a larger version (still with the pink cover-ups, so that it's safe for work).
Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008.   Comments (14)

Halle Berry and her Six Toes — Does Halle Berry have six toes on her right foot? There are people out there who have spent a lot of time pondering this question. The evidence for the six-toe theory is based on these pictures, which are at least two years old.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, no matter what these pictures appear to show, Halle Berry is not polydactyl. If she was, she'd admit it.




Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008.   Comments (25)

Heiresses Against Drunk Elephants — A few days ago word got out that heiress Paris Hilton was trying to call attention to the problem of drunken elephants going on rampages in northeast India. Soon this story got picked up by the press. For instance, here's part of a report that appeared in India's The Hindu:

GUWAHATI: Conservationists on Tuesday hailed socialite Paris Hilton, who has been convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol, for trying to highlight the cause of binge-drinking elephants in the northeast.
Activists said a celebrity endorsement was sure to raise awareness of the plight of the pachyderms that get drunk on farmers’ homemade rice beer then go on a rampage. Last month, six wild elephants that broke into a farm in Meghalaya were electrocuted after discovering and drinking the potent brew then uprooting an electricity pole.
“There would have been more casualties if the villagers hadn’t chased them away. And four elephants died in a similar way three years ago. It is just so sad,” Ms. Hilton was quoted as saying in Tokyo.
“The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them,” she said in a report posted on the World Entertainment News Network website. Her comments were picked up by websites and newspapers around the globe.
“I am indeed happy Hilton has taken note of recent incidents of wild elephants in northeast India going berserk after drinking homemade rice beer and getting killed,” Sangeeta Goswami, who heads animal rights group People for Animals, said.
“As part of her global elephant campaign, Hilton should, in fact, think of visiting this region literally infested with elephants.”

Much to everyone's disappointment, it turned out that Paris Hilton never made these comments about drunken elephants. The AP posted a brief retraction:

GAUHATI, India (AP) — In a Nov. 13 story, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that Paris Hilton was praised by conservationists for highlighting the problem of binge-drinking elephants in northeastern India. Lori Berk, a publicist for Hilton, said she never made any comments about helping drunken elephants in India.

It's not clear to me what the original source of the Hilton-elephant news was. One theory is that it originated from an article on spoof.com, which would make it a case of satire mistaken as news. But the spoof.com article seems to be dated after the story had already widely circulated.

Whoever dreamed it up should be commended, because I can think of no one better qualified to be the patron saint of drunken elephants than Paris Hilton.

But while on the subject of drunken elephants, I should note that the widely circulated notion that elephants like to get drunk by eating marula fruit rotting on the ground is not true. Recent scientific studies have shown that a) elephants don't actually like to eat the marula fruit when it is on the ground. They prefer the fruit still in the tree. And b) the fruit does not spend enough time in their gut to ferment there and make them drunk. But it is true that elephants will happily drink alcohol if it is offered to them. (There have been studies about that too.)

[Credit goes to Tah for posting this first in the forum.]
Posted: Wed Nov 14, 2007.   Comments (3)

Madonna’s Arms — What in the world has happened to Madonna? The Daily Mail published these photos of her, taken "as she left her private members club in London's Soho to attend a business meeting," clutching a large designer bag. The sinewy appearance of her arms is attributed to "use of 'miracle' machine - The Power Plate," which apparently is some kind of vibrating platform offering "the same benefits of an hour-long sweaty gym workout in just 15 minutes with the machine burning the calories for you." Sure, it lets you get a full workout in just 15 minutes, but unfortunately it also turns you into a walking skeleton.

At first I thought the photo of Madonna's arms may have been photoshopped, like the Too Skinny images, but we'll have to take the word of the Daily Mail's photographer that the pictures are real. (via J-Walk)

Related post: Ann Coulter's hands

image
Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007.   Comments (24)

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