By-Accident.com

Status: Hoax Website
image By-Accident.com claims to be a company that will "deliver customized accidents such as rape, assault and past traumatic experiences. All personally tailored to suit your special needs." The idea is that you can fake a traumatic experience in your past, and thereby get all kinds of attention as a victim. The company will even provide (optional) Aesthetic Scar Surgery to make your past "accident" more believable: "You can have any physical damage you want, our trained surgeons promise it won't hurt and the result will be exactly as you wish."

By-Accident.com is a hoax. Satirical elements such as the Christmas Mugging Special make this fairly obvious: "Your chance to avoid stress and become the center of attention during the holiday season!... Get mugged and make sure to have a warm and happy winter!" In addition, the creator of the site didn't do much to hide their identity. The site is registered to someone called Barbara Nordhjem. A quick Google search finds a poster called Malach on pixelex.com stating that: "the page is a prank.. girl making it is a danish artist. Was working for me as a production assistant some time ago."

Of course, even though the site is a hoax, it does have a core of truth to it in that a company offering such a service definitely would find customers. Witness all the fake victims that popped up after 9/11. Victimhood is very appealing to a lot of people. (Thanks to Bob Pagani, aka Cranky Media Guy, for the link.)

Psychology Websites

Posted on Sun Nov 13, 2005



Comments

More useful would be a site that has a list of illnesses or conditions that have few external symptoms and that do not require major treatment, but which are nonetheless severe enough to justify sick breaks from work without having to get a doctor's sick note. People are nicer to you if you can convincingly pretend to be vulnerable, which is why society so loves short people, kittens, and upended turtles.

Didn't some journalist or other pretend to have cancer, and he was lying? In fact, looking on Google news there is the story of a Suzannah Bay Dirickson, from Richmond in Virginia, "a Henrico County police receptionist who faked cancer and [swindled] the county's law enforcement community out of about $14,000" and who was "sentenced to two years in prison this afternoon" i.e. November 10th, so she'll be three days into her sentence. Think of the embarrassment if you tell everybody you are going to die of a disease, and instead you get better; also, I imagine her former co-workers will never give to charity again.

Since when was rape an 'accident'?
Posted by Ashley Pomeroy  on  Mon Nov 14, 2005  at  01:48 PM
"... Since when was rape an 'accident'?"

It's not an accident on the part of the rapist, but, like assaults and muggings, it's an accident from the point of view of the victim, since she didn't intend to get raped, and probably in most cases was actually trying not to be raped.
Posted by Big Gary in a safe place  on  Mon Nov 14, 2005  at  05:06 PM
This site has a pretty deep meaning behind it, that people only care or pay attention to you after a traumatic experience. It's actually one of the better art websites I've seen, yes, I'd call this art.
Posted by Dracul  on  Fri Jan 20, 2006  at  07:36 PM
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