Hoax Museum Blog: Sex/Romance

Nude Photos Required to Enter Canada — The Toronto Sun reports that exotic dancers applying for a visa to enter Canada are now expected to submit photos of themselves performing in the nude... to prove that they really are exotic dancers. Immigration lawyer Mendel Green claims that the rules are quite specific: "They can't be partially nude. If they don't have pictures in the nude, they are not going to wiggle their bottoms in Canada." This sounds very weird. Could the Toronto Sun be the victim of a joke? Are they pulling our leg? Or have Canadian immigration officials just figured out a great way to get their hands on lots of free pictures of naked women? I'm not sure, but given how many other bizarre rules and regulations government bureaucrats manage to come up with, I'm guessing the story is probably true.
Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2004.   Comments (5)

Sperm Race TV — Reality TV shows just keep getting weirder and weirder. The latest one being developed in Britain (unless it's all a hoax, like Lapdance Island or Quarantine) is Sperm Race TV, in which a group of guys get to compete for the prize of fathering a child. Two finalists are chosen, one chosen by the mother on the basis of romantic attraction, the other chosen by the show's producers on the basis of 'genetic compatibility' with the mother. The two guys will then compete in a sperm race, filmed with special fiber-optic cameras, to see whose sperm can inseminate the mother's egg first. To me this sounds hoaxy on a number of different levels. First of all, what do they mean by 'genetic compatibility'? I can understand you might want to screen to make sure two partners aren't harboring deadly recessive genes, but beyond that what exactly makes two people genetically compatible? Second, how exactly will they stage this 'sperm race'? I assume they'd have to introduce the two sperm samples at the exact same time into the woman to make it a fair race, but then how will they know which sperm belongs to which father? And finally, are they seriously contemplating getting the woman pregnant? Or will they abort the child? Either way, they're going to outrage a lot of people.
Posted: Sat Jul 24, 2004.   Comments (12)

Misleading URLs — Jim Terr submitted this hoax website of his own creation: willingchicks.com. It offers "world-class companionship — If you can afford it!" It belongs in the genre of sites with misleading URLs, in the same vein as nice-tits.org and supermodelswithseethroughtops.com (all very safe for work). Misleading URLs are similar to Unfortunate URLs, the difference being that the former are intentional whereas the latter aren't.
Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2004.   Comments (0)

The Plucking Rainbow Orgy — image Viewers of British tv might remember Rainbow, a children's show starring the puppet characters Bungle, Zippy, and George, and hosted by Geoffrey Hayes. Recently a movie has been circulating around the web (you can also see it here) purporting to show an episode of Rainbow that's heavily, heavily laced with sexual innuendo. Way too much innuendo to possibly be accidental. It's been dubbed the 'Rainbow Plucking Orgy' tape. It's very funny, but is it real? Was it ever really broadcast? According to the Planet Gromit site, the tape is real, but it never aired. It was created as a joke and was not meant to see the light of day. I have no idea how it's surfaced now.
Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2004.   Comments (17)


Viagraholics Anonymous — image Sex addiction can be real enough, but Viagraholics Anonymous, a site dedicated to helping men who are addicted to Viagra, seems a bit tongue-in-cheek. For instance, take this testimony from Ben, a recovering Viagraholic: "I turned to the Internet and ordered more Viagra online, from two or three sites at a time, to maintain my supply. The days that followed are just a blur. Mornings I'd wake up on the couch, my pants around my ankles with another damned erection, then take a cold shower and stagger into work. I'd be walking around with an obvious erection in my pants, unaware that people were laughing at me behind my back." Ben's problem sounds a little like something out of a Clive Barker story. (via J-Walk)
Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2004.   Comments (3)

Gay Fuel Energy Drink — image Gay Fuel is the bright pink energy drink that will get you 'Fired Up'. When I first saw this site I figured it had to be a spoof. After all, a special drink just for gays? It seems like a natural lead-in to all kinds of jokes (for instance, what happens if you drink it straight?). But after some quick research I'm quite sure that Gay Fuel is very real. It's available for purchase from a number of online vendors ($12.95 a six-pack!), and a lot of other sites discuss it. Andy Towle, the artist who designed the can for it, says that it tastes like "something between a Cosmo and a Red Bull." The whole concept of Gay Fuel seems a bit like niche marketing run amok to me, though I guess there are all kinds of products marketed exclusively towards the fundamentalist Christian community, so why not have a drink marketed exclusively towards the gay community? But it seems like not everyone in the gay community is embracing it with open arms. A gay rights activist in Portland has declared that "We are not interested in "brand loyalty" to those "brave" corporations who first bid to divest us of our money. We won't drink a Bud Light, Absolut or Gay Fuel beverage to support the commercial assimilation of our community."
Posted: Wed Jun 30, 2004.   Comments (3)

Clueless Childless Couple Follow-Up — Back in May I posted an entry about a German couple who went to a fertility clinic to find out why they couldn't produce a child. The reason: they hadn't realized that you first have to have sex in order to get pregnant. Supposedly they both came from very religious backgrounds and had never been taught about the birds and the bees. The clinic was said to be planning to conduct a survey to find out if there were other similarly clueless couples out there. This story was widely reported in the news, even though it seemed a little far-fetched, to say the least. At the time I noted that a case kind of like this had been reported in a medical journal, but that the reason the couple didn't have sex was not because they didn't realize what they were supposed to do, but because the husband suffered from erectile dysfunction. I emailed the German clinic where the clueless couple was said to have been treated and finally received a reply confirming that the case of the clueless couple reported in the English-language media did derive from the case of the couple who didn't have sex for more mechanical reasons. Here's the email I received from the doctor:



Dear Alex Boese,

As one of the authors of the paper you asked for Prof Johannisson I would like to inform you, that in fact we treated such a couple. The problem wasn't that the couple had tried to get pregnant without having sexual intercourse - the reason for not having sexual intercourse was psychogenic erectile dysfunction in the male. They were aware of their problem and not treated with assisted reproductive techiques. We send them to a psychologist for counselling. The reason to publish this case report was to make doctors sensible for those problems. All other things, described in this paper on (1) the religious background and (2) a planned survey etc are not true and definitively not related to this case! May be, others have had a similiar case published which I am not aware of. Hope, this information helps you to put some light on the situation.

Yours,

Priv. Doz. Dr. med. M. Ludwig

ENDOKRINOLOGIKUM Hamburg

Zentrum für Hormon- und Stoffwechselerkrankungen,

gynäkologische Endokrinologie und Reproduktionsmedizin




So that settles that. There was a very small grain of truth to the story, but in its passage from a medical journal article to the Daily Mirror and beyond, the story was improved quite a bit.
Posted: Sat Jun 26, 2004.   Comments (0)

To Hermione on her 18th Birthday — image Donald Nyffington, 37-year-old UNIX programmer, is in love. He's in love with Hermione Granger... or rather with Emma Watson who plays Hermione in the Harry Potter movies. And Emma, unfortunately for Donald, is only 14. So he's started the 'Official Countdown Website to Hermione Granger's 18th Birthday.' The site is convincing enough that you really might start to believe that Donald and his unrequited passion for Hermione are for real. But they're not. The picture on Donald's 'About Me' page gives it away. It comes from an old Onion article titled 'Creepy Middle-Aged Weirdos Swept Up In Harry Potter Craze.' (via Scattered Pieces)
Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2004.   Comments (6)

The Old Fake-Wife Scam — How to get divorced from your wife behind her back: use a fake wife. A man and his wife showed up in divorce court, where they proceeded to file all the paperwork to end their marriage. Only it later turned out that the woman with him at the court wasn't really his wife. She was a phony. His real wife learned about the divorce when she received all the paperwork in the mail. You've got to wonder how this guy ever thought he was going to get away with this. Did he think his real wife would never notice and never complain?
Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2004.   Comments (0)

Hoax Warning — Here's the latest hoax warning that's going around via email. Actually, it may be quite old, but I've only come across it recently. So here it is:

I hate those hoax warnings, but this one is important! Send this
warning to everyone on your e-mail list.
If someone comes to your front door saying they are conducting a survey
and asks you to take your clothes off, do not do it.!!! This is a scam;
they only want to see you naked. I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so
stupid and cheap now.....

Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004.   Comments (5)

Hunting for Bambi Officially a Hoax — It's official. Michael Burdick, the guy behind that whole 'Hunting for Bambi' thing that turned into a media circus about a year ago (you remember, the Las Vegas company that claimed to be hosting paintball games in which you could hunt naked women), has finally admitted that the whole thing was a hoax. Not that anyone was in much doubt of that. As part of a plea bargain deal "Burdick acknowledged that claiming the paintball hunts were real was part of an advertising strategy for the videos and apologized for 'any embarrassment to the city of Las Vegas caused by such false or misleading promotional activity.'" I'm sure we'll all be able to sleep easier now that this has finally been laid to rest.
Posted: Thu May 27, 2004.   Comments (1)

Clueless Childless Couple — Last week the British Daily Mirror printed a story about a particularly clueless German couple. As the article put it:
"Fertility doctors were baffled when a perfectly-healthy couple claimed they couldn't have children - until they confessed they had never made love. The husband, 36, and his 32-year-old wife thought that all they had to do to make a baby was to lie next to each other and let nature take its course."
This story got picked up by wire services, and soon was being linked to all over the internet. But was there actually any truth to the story?
The snopes website, skeptical of the story, pointed out that 'tales of sexually naive adults who don't understand what sex is' are a common subject for urban legends. But other internet sleuths dug a little deeper and discovered that the Daily Mirror's story actually derived from a real case. Comments left at Der Schockwellenreiter website (in German) pointed to this April 2003 medical article describing a couple who sought fertility treatment at the Lubeck clinic, only to later confess that after eight years of marriage they had never actually had sex. The reason: the husband suffered from erectile dysfunction.
Another article from the Medical Tribune describes this same case in more detail (the article is in German, so I used BabelFish to produce a rough translation of it). So the Daily Mirror's story improves on the actual case quite a bit. A whole lot, in fact. But it's not complete fiction. The author of the article was Allan Hall, a reporter based in Germany who regularly sells stories to the British tabloids (back in the 1990s he was the London Sun's New York correspondent). He seems to enjoy taking weird stories and juicing them up to make them even weirder. Headlines from some of his other stories include, "Dog Called Adolf Gave Nazi Salute to Children," "My Twins Had Different Dads," and "Eaten By His Pet Spiders" (this final article was apparently also more fiction than fact). (I got many of these links via Heiko Hebig)
Posted: Sun May 23, 2004.   Comments (1)

Ex-Wife’s Knickers — Supposedly to get even with his soon-to-be-ex wife, who's been cheating on him, a man is selling her knickers on eBay. Except it's not eBay. Just a mock-up of it. Now if the (fake) seller had taken pictures of himself wearing her underwear (taking a page from Wedding Dress Guy), it might have been funnier. (via Adrants)
Posted: Thu May 20, 2004.   Comments (0)

Brutally Honest Personals — image It's common knowledge that personal ads take liberties with the truth. People are trying to sell themselves, and they're rarely going to do that by telling the unvarnished truth (same goes for job resumes). Which is why it's refreshing to see Esquire hosting Brutally Honest Personals. Kind of like an anti-hoax, you might say. These people don't hold back any punches. Though, of course, my naturally cynical nature immediately began to suspect that these ads may be erring too much the other way... inventing grim descriptions for comedy's sake. And are these people using their real name? Are they even real people? I guess the only way to find out would be to try and get a date with one of them.
Posted: Mon May 17, 2004.   Comments (2)

Lady Heather — image Lady Heather is a professional dominatrix, and this is her website. When she says 'My command is your wish,' you know she means it. Actually, she's a recurring character on CSI, which is one of my favorite shows though I haven't had a chance to see it in a while. Unfortunately you can only view her site for about two seconds before you're automatically redirected to the main site for CSI. Which is a pity. I think they should develop Lady Heather's Box a little more. (Thanks, Jeff)
Posted: Fri May 14, 2004.   Comments (2)

Britney Spears Naked? — image Is this a photo of Britney Spears naked (not safe for work) taken for a top-secret, yet-to-be-announced Playboy feature that she was paid $40 million for? It looks a lot like her. A whole lot like her. But it's not Britney. It's Emmie (also not safe for work). Normally I don't post much, if at all, about fake porn images. After all, there are so many of them (most of them so obviously fake), and the 'fake porn detective' has that area pretty well covered (for bandwidth reasons he requests that people don't link directly to his site, but if you're interested it's http://www.fake-detective.com/). But for Britney, I had to make an exception. Although I suppose this image isn't actually a fake. It's just a case of a remarkable look-alike.

Posted: Wed May 12, 2004.   Comments (7)

Wedding Dress Guy — image My last shred of faith that there is anything real remaining on the internet has now gone. Wedding dress guy has turned out to be a hoax. Like seemingly everyone else on the internet, I recently checked out his eBay auction of his ex-wife's wedding dress. I read through his rant about his ex-wife and enjoyed his remarks, such as his statement that he was selling the dress "to get enough money for maybe a couple of Mariners tickets and some beer." I also laughed at the pictures of him posing in the white dress. I didn't suspect that the story was a fake (I should have known better!), which of course it is, as Nicole Brodeur uncovered in this Seattle Times article. Wedding Dress Guy is named Larry Star. He mentioned a sister in the story, but she doesn't exist. He mentioned that he had no kids with his ex-wife, but he does. I guess this is another case of how you can sell anything on eBay, as long as you weave a good story around it. And the dress did sell: for $3,850. For that price, the buyer gets a used wedding dress and a phony story. It's amazing what some people will spend their money on.
Posted: Fri Apr 30, 2004.   Comments (55)

Operation Take One for the Country — image Operation Take One for the Country (or OTOFTC) has been getting a lot of publicity lately. It claims to be "a movement of like-minded women (women predominantly as of right now) who have covertly organized into groups to frequent eating and drinking establishments near armed service bases where troops are preparing to ship out overseas, and take one for the country, so to speak." In other words, they pick up soldiers in bars and sleep with them. This has been generating a lot of cries of hoax. For instance, Single Southern Guy notes that there's a transcript of a radio interview with two of the OTOFTC participants on the site, but the radio station that supposedly conducted this interview doesn't appear to exist. My thoughts on this? First, even if it's not real, this will obviously immediately inspire 'Operation Pretend You're a Soldier.' Second, women sleeping with departing soldiers certainly lies well within the realm of possibility. The real question is whether it's being done on an organized basis with entire sororities and the like participating, as this site claims. That seems less likely. Sure, some women may joke that they're participating in OTOFTC, but that doesn't really constitute a covertly organized movement. It seems more likely that this is a cute idea that someone is using to sell some t-shirts and bumper stickers.
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2004.   Comments (5)

American Merkin Company — image A merkin is a pubic wig. The term is also sometimes used as slang/shorthand for 'American.' Apparently actors doing nude scenes sometimes wear merkins. Heidi Klum did a scene involving an oversized, obviously fake merkin in the movie Blow Dry. But where, you might wonder, could a casual curiosity seeker ever get their hands on such a thing? Just head on over to the American Merkin Company (not safe for work, but only mildly so). Their motto is 'Handcrafting merkins for over 150 years,' and they offer a full range of this product in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors. Or at least, so they claim. They display a number at the bottom of their webpage which you can call and order some up (1-877-508-6307). I couldn't contain my curiosity about whether this company was for real, so I dialed them up, only to reach an operator who had never heard of them. So I guess the American Merkin Company is a hoax. Their motto should have been a tip-off.
Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2004.   Comments (1)

Job Scam With Strippers — Here's an inventive scam. A Miami couple placed ads in newspapers offering $5000 a week for the job of chauffeuring strippers around. They got 43 applicants to wire them deposits of almost $1000 in order to secure this nonexistent dream job. Of course, they could probably have said, pay us $5000 a week and we'll let you drive strippers around, and they would have still netted some victims.
Posted: Tue Apr 27, 2004.   Comments (0)

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