## Trolls, Hoaxes, Culture Jamming, Poetic Terrorism, Media Hacks, Frauds, Impostors, Spoofs, Counterfeits, Fakes, Pranks, Scams, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

#### Dedicated to Joshua A. Norton, Emperor of These United States.

### "Every sham shows there is a reality." -- P.T. Barnum

##

> A $20,000 (U.S.) prize has been announced "for the best act of creative subversion of any highly visible commercial product" in 1997. Click here for details.

### Media Hacks:

####
- Lambda Sigma Delta helps out: A mythical fraternity engages in public service and the newspapers are happy to report.

- Pol Pot hoax called experiment -- A Swedish internet marketing agency claims responsibility for a news hoax claiming that Pol Pot was in Sweeden seeking political asylum. "It was an artistic experiment... aimed at learning something about [how] the net and... the media work together," said the managing director.

- The National Pochismo Institute: Hispanics For Governor Wilson parody California's racial politics.

- Ladies Against Women: A parody of conservative women's groups.

- Pranking Talk Radio: A step-by-step guide to getting on the air, staying on the air, and making listeners confused.

- The 'Devilish' Barney Media Hoax -- Barney the Dinosaur is implanting the godless theory of evilution in our childrens' heads.

- Guerjia Culturale -- A site (in German) for the Kommunikationsguerilla in all of us.

- Salvation Central -- A caller to right-wing talk shows takes things to their illogical conclusions.

- Poem With Hidden Protest Gladdens Chinese Dissidents -- "Li Peng Step Down!" hidden inside a patriotic poem in the official Chinese Communist Party newspaper.

- Abrupt Culture Jamming -- cereal boxes, newspaper articles, tracts, manifestos.

- Ever heard of Ern Malley, Helen Demidenko, Wanda Koolmatie, or Araki Yasusada? More than noms-de-plume, these were invented persona, complete with biography.

- A fake Memoir of Dmitri Shostakovich by Solomon Volkov.

- AOL made its subscribers April Fools says one subscriber who didn't find their fake news story funny. Why, you'd think the net would be a more reliable source of information, and especially AOL, wouldn't you?

- Journalism class' experiment aims to teach a lesson by sending out 35 fake press releases to see how many newspapers fall for it.

- Fake Klansmen, Cat Hunting: TV 'News' Producer Caught in Hoax: German news stories planted by someone with an eye for fiction...

- Hoax has Springer show defending its 'integrity' -- tabloid TV gets fooled.

- Peter van der Linden trolls newspapers: S.M.E.G.M.A. keeps the pages safe, and a forged pro-drug editorial from the attorney general.

- Floss, dance, don't be fooled -- the MIT commencement address that wasn't delivered by Kurt Vonnegut.

- I was a media dupe: There is no Church of Kurt Cobain, but it made such a good story that this reporter couldn't help falling for it.

- Princess Di caught on film: Say, isn't that the princess cavorting in her bra? The Sun thought so, but nope, they got fooled...

- A Journalist's Favorite Hoax: Petrifications: Three petrified people invented by the press.

- Poe's Balloon hoax: Edgar Allen needed some money, so he got the newspaper a great scoop about two folks who crossed the Atlantic by balloon. Poe always was better at fiction, though...

- Alan Sokal's Social Text hoax: Sokal managed to get Social Text to print a paper that Sokal packed with as much baloney as could fit.

- Joey Skaggs' "Sexonix" technodildonics company: Reported as fact here and there.

- Joey Skaggs' "Solomon Project" and more: Use artificial intelligence, not judges and juries, to decide fate of defendants.

- www.joeyskaggs.com -- Well, well... This otta be good.

- Grunge Lexicon Hoax: The New York Times printed this phony guide to grunge slang.

- Discordianism: the Hidden Threat -- often overlooked among dangerous fanatic cults.

- Esquire's sexy starlet is the hoax with the most and more -- Esquire Magazine's insta-superactress covergirl Allegra Coleman an alluring fabrication.

- Adam Rich is Dead! (and more). Well, okay, maybe he isn't, but it's good for a laugh.

- Alan Abel, World's Greatest Hoaxer: Founder of the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals and a school for professional panhandlers.

- Jenny's P--d Off Over Pint Pitch -- Jenny McCarthy selling her urine as a gag gift? Nope, just an Alan Abel prank.

- You Can't Believe Everything You Read: This is news, according to the Washington Post.

### "We want people to think critically, and there's not a lot of critical thinking going on. We also made the other side look like buffoons, like Sergeant Schultz in Hogan's Heroes. You make your enemy appear cartoonish, and it gives you a sense of empowerment." -- Esteban Zul.

### Pranks:

####
- Evil Genius List of Hi-Tech Practical Joke Ideas -- such as: "Carve computer-generated ripples in the surface of a main highway, and when vehicles pass over the surface, mysterious voices whisper, and distant music plays."

- Free the kids!: Fliers advertising a meeting of the North-American Man-Boy Love Association cause alarm in a central California neighborhood.

- The Whistle Prank: A wonderful prank using the natural kingdom, Pavlovian principles, and patience to work wonders. Hope it really happened...

- Paul Krassner: Who remembers LBJ skull-fucking JFK's warm head wound?

- Fake Assassinations: "My guess is that nobody can withstand the psychological warfare tactic of repeated, simulated death."

- The Meaning of 'Hack' along with several illustrative examples.

- The Pieman: "I throw pies at people."

- School's Closed: The prank you wish you'd played in high school.

- Students sign off with a wave of muck-up madness -- It's the end of the school year and time for the traditional theft, vandalism, and indecent exposure.

- The Macworld Prank and Kill Gates: What are computer conventions for, anyway?

- Windows Pranks -- make your buddy's computer act peculiar-like.

- Coyle and Sharpe's idea of fun, including "Edges", "Musical Animals" and "Transporting Captured People"

- Prank email to corporations: Fun at your keyboard.

- Samsung is the Target of Tangled Spam -- fake spam infuriates folks.

- Pundits release plethora of pranks: Yale pranksters on the loose.

- Experimental Free Travel: The democratization of power thanks to Xerox. Today the bus is free of charge, folks.

- Spy Magazine's "Bunny Burger" hoax: How will P.R. firms compete to represent a mythical fast food rabbit meat chain?

### "Any number can play. Millions of people could nullify the control system which those who are behind Watergate and Nixon are attempting to impose. Like all control systems it depends on maintaining a monopoly position. If anybody can be tape recorder 3 then tape recorder 3 loses power." -- W.S. Burroughs

### Culture Jamming:

####
- Do not resist your beating!: Official-looking police notices popped up in California after the Rodney King verdict, announcing martial law in bureaucratese.

- The Barbie Liberation Organization and more: Switch the voice chips at the toy store and Barbie says "Vengeance is Mine" while G.I. Joe says "Let's Go Shopping!"

- Boy 'Bimbos' Too Much for Game-Maker Maxis: A video game programmer replaced some kissing bimbos with kissing hunks and got fired for his troubles.

- Victor Lewis-Smith -- Culture jammer from the U.K.

- The Gallery of Advertising Parody: Haven't you always wanted to?

- Spend Some Quality Time With Your Telemarketer -- because scum are people, too. For more ideas, click here, here, or here.

- Poetic Terrorism on the citizens' band, good buddy.

- Karen Eliot's MNK Investigation Website -- you make the call.

- AOHell: A program designed to drive AOL batty.

- Propaganda for the Paranoid -- just what we need.

- Dirty Tricks: A fake home page for the 1996 Bob Dole campaign at http://www.dole96.org/.

- The Free Radio Network -- That's pirate radio, matey!

- Adbusters Culture Jammers' Headquarters and Adbusters Culture Jammers' Toolbox

- The Coalition to Raise Aesthetic Consciousness: Direct action against uglification.

- Communiques of the Association for Ontological Anarchy, with poetic-terrorist brainstorming included.

- The Universal Life Church: Your doctorate of divinity is only a mouse-click away.

- The Faceless Birthday Bash at Chuck-E-Cheese: Mayhem in America's food & fun center.

- Cheap Suit Santas terrorize christmas shoppers in marauding packs.

- Antics of the San Francisco Cacophony Society: Hoaxing is our profession.

- Cacophony Flyers: Read Los Angeles telephone poles and learn about psychic car repair, public book burnings, and private scalp massage, courtesy of the L.A. Cacophony Society.

- High Mass: And then the priest said, "Brothers, God is dead." Gotta have cojones to pull this one off.

- Crass!: Punk rockers make the press think they've been duped by the KGB. They got the 'duped' part right.

- Unselfish Service: How the Texas House of Representatives officially praised the Boston Strangler.

- Negativland: Sonic, judicial outlaws & NegativWorldWideWebland -- Pranks of these "artists of appropriation."

- The (Unofficial) TV Nation WWW Page -- Michael Moore made a career out of this stuff...

- BBC's avant-garde music hoax: Banging pots and pans, essentially, but at least one music reviewer took it seriously.

- Arm the Homeless -- Food Not Bombs is only half-right.

- Jerry Rubin: Media prankster first class.

- Police say man robbed bank, gave away money: And the poor fellow will probably do time for it, too...

- A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public: This classic spoof was written by Jonathan Swift and published anonymously in 1729.

- The Shortest Way with Dissenters by Daniel Defoe (1702). It was taken seriously and got Defoe in hot water.

- Sometimes the best hoaxers don't know they're hoaxers: they're just kooks, crackpots, cranks, quacks, and wackos.

- Bank Error in Your Favor -- How Patrick Combs cashed a huge junk-mail pseudo-check, how his bank fell for it, and how he's gotten away with it.

- Eric's History of Perpetual Motion and Free Energy Machines -- I like people who spell it all out in the titles of their pages.

### "Get someone from an out-of-state newspaper to run a story on something sight unseen, and then you Xerox that story and include it in a second mailing. Journalists see that it has appeared in print and think, therefore, that there's no need to do any further research. That's how a snowflake becomes a snowball and finally an avalanche." -- Joey Skaggs

### Hoaxes:

####
- P.T. Barnum: "The public appears to be amused even while they are conscious of being deceived."

- The Brick Trick: Clever manipulation of the public by P.T. Barnum.

- Joice Heth made a career out of impersonating George Washington's childhood nurse.

- Alternative Three: There is a massive conspiracy in the works, and this documentary finally exposed it.

- The Racial Hoax as Crime: The Law as Affirmation: More hoaxes using race as a red herring.

- The Kinderhook Plates and more: Spoofs on the Book of Mormon that fooled its author.

- Yippies Invade Wall Street: Another of Hoffman's strokes of genius...

- Palisade, Nevada -- the "Best Jest in the West."

- Piltdown Man (and more): A classic fraud/hoax, the missing link on tour.

- David Rorvik reported in 1978 that scientists had cloned a human being. Now that human cloning is in the news again, Omni magazine revisits the hoax.

- The Eremin Letter: This document seems to indicate that Stalin was an informer for Russia's secret police before he went Red -- but is this just propaganda? Let's get to the bottom of it...

- Defense Memo Tells Anti-Cuba Ideas -- The New York Times reports that the U.S. government came up with a number of disinformation campaigns and hoaxes aimed at the Cuban government and the American public.

- Inside the Department of Dirty Tricks -- that'd be the C.I.A. "We're not the Boy Scouts."

- From The Maine to the Tonkin Gulf, disinformation has fueled the fires of war in the United States.

- Report from Iron Mountain and yet more and still more: A wonderful hoax, supposedly put out by a government think-tank to come up with ways to cope with the threat of world peace. Dreamed up by 60s peaceniks and rediscovered by 90s militia conspiracy fans.

- Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion: My, but this one has some mileage on it. The Energizer hoax, you could call it... The Jews is taking over the world!

- Old manuscript may be a hoax -- The Philadelphia Daily News on the hoax manuscript "The City of Light."

- The Myth of Fingerprints -- Alexander Cockburn on literary hoaxes and such, from The Nation.

- Hoax-busting Resources from c|net.

- The Good Times Virus Hoax: Don't read this! You might become infected!

- Save Manhattan!: We could cut the island loose, turn it around, and then fix it to the mainland so it won't tip over.

- Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide! a major component of acid rain.

- Rosie Ruiz, the woman who didn't win the 1980 Boston Marathon.

- Uri Geller, that spoon-bending phenomenon.

- Miracle Mongers and Their Methods by Harry Houdini.

- The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices: Weight-reduction glasses ("well, I look lighter...), a foot-powered breast enlarger, and more.

- Great American Quacks.

- The "state" of Idaho: The case for open debate: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?

- The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence: They still believe this one in the Jesse Helms state.

- The Philadelphia Experiment and more-- Everything you ever wanted to know about Project Rainbow, and so much more.

- The Museum of Forgery

- Fakes & Forgeries, Frauds & Hoaxes -- a catalog of books on these subjects.

- The Art of the Fake: Egyptian Forgeries from the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology

- Christians for the Cloning of Jesus -- too obviously a put-on you say? Well... people seem to have a weakness for Jesus stuff, as these email messages to the site's author indicate.

- Fritz Kreisler -- A violinist who passed off his own compositions as the works of the masters.

- The Strange Case of Hans van Meegeren and more and more (in Dutch): Dutch artist and forger who sold a "Vermeer" to Hermann Goering.

- Microsoft's Windows for Macintosh: Heh heh. You knew it was coming, didn't you.

- 1-900-911: A service that lets you pay to listen in on 911 calls in another community. Cute.

- The Kensington Runestone -- A phony relic of Viking exploration of North America that still has believers today.

- Burrows Cave -- The site of some very curious archaeological finds.

- Beringer's Autographed Stones -- Fake fossils fooled this fellow.

- The Plate of Brass that had nothing at all to do with Sir Francis Drake.

- The Vinland Map -- Yep, It's a hoax, but don't tell the believers!

- Ron McKelvey (actually Ron Weaver) -- the 30-year-old who played college football under an assumed identity.

- Impostor Still Touring as Ex-Eagles Guitarist -- And getting away with it, apparantly.

- Trickster's Timeline -- hoaxes throughout history.

### "Don't picket - vandalize. Don't protest - deface. When ugliness, poor deisgn & stupid waste are forced upon you, turn Luddite, throw your shoe in the works, retaliate. Smash the symbols of the Empire in the name of nothing but the heart's longing for grace." -- Hakim Bey.

### Creative Vandalism:

####
- Team 7 -- A Renegade Architecture.

- Exotic Plants: Includes "Thompson's Felchings," "Heinous Welsh Squash," "Common Dickweed" and "Necrotic Mulch."

- Before and After: Creative use of anagrams to improve commercial signs.

- Broken Glass Stumps Public Safety -- police have no suspects and know of no motive.

- Crime Tracker: A piece of software sold to the police that ate up their records; now the hacker can't be found!

- And if that wasn't funny enough, a number of law enforcement agencies handed over as much as $8,000 for the Quadro QRS 250G, a plastic box with an antenna that was billed as an electro-magnetic detective with remarkable powers of perception.

- Art Crimes -- graffiti as artistic expression.

- The Voice of James Earl Jones: Why can't everything have the voice of James Earl Jones?

- Billboard Liberation, and more, and more, and The Billboard Liberation Front's Greatest Hits.

- (Why Do So) Few Have the Power(?): A fine example (if I say so myself) of billboard liberation.

- got norplant? -- billboard liberators hit that annoying "got milk?" billboard.

- Joe Chemo -- Tobacco Free Washington gets into the billboard-spoofing act.

- Don't forget your Rodney King cap!: Examples of billboard liberation in the wake of the Rodney King beating.

- Adding the Blemish of Truth -- a brief how-to guide to billboard liberation.

- The Rensselaer Drop Squad: And the art of dropping big things down tall staircases.

- Long Live Sacrifice! And other slogans of the defenders of the Italian dromedariat.

- LAPD Suffers Mystery Hack -- a hoax about a web-page hack proves to be as fun as the real thing.

- MIT's Guide to Lock Picking. Might come in handy, eh?

- Penguins Capture the Task Force: Hoaxers advertise their own headlines in Britain during the Falklands War.

- The C.I.A. Nicaraguan Sabotage Manual -- May it come back to haunt them...

### "Why did I do it? While my method was satirical, my motivation is utterly serious. What concerns me is the proliferation, not just of nonsense and sloppy thinking per se, but of a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking..." -- Alan Sokal

### Theory and Advocacy:

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- Z100 -- Fakes, Hoaxes, Scams and Forgeries: The Culture of Inauthenticity -- A fake class about fakes.

- "We Interrupt this Program..." -- a real class about culture jamming -- good links.

- The Electronic Revolution by William S. Burroughs. Theory of culture jamming in cut-up context.

- Art Sabotage and Poetic Terrorism by Hakim Bey.

- No New Hoax Under the Sun says U.S. News Online, reporting on the history of literary hoaxes.

- Wobbly Sabotage: an instruction guide by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

- Goy Division: Evangelical Radio meets its match.

- Barry Minkow, founder of ZZZZ Best, one of the great business scams of the 1980s, now on the lecture circuit.

- Culture Jamming and more -- it's not just a job, it's an adventure.

- The School Stoppers' Textbook -- Warning! It may be considered a felony to distribute this document to school children in the state of California! So if you're a minor, please don't click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

- The Encyclopedia of Direct Action: Reference work for the civil disobedience crowd.

- Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare: Reference work for the CIA crowd.

- Swindler, Spy, Rebel: The Confidence Woman in Nineteenth-Century America. (Ad.)

- How to Break the Law: If you're gonna do something illegal, read this first. It might save you a lot of trouble...

- Spam Libs: How to make email spam-fiends nervous.

- Action Not Art, but action is art!

- Hoax or Hokum: The Computer as Joker: Political direct-mail polls and fund-raisers use up-to-date computer-aided dishonesty and manipulation. Pay attention, would-be pranksters!

- Push Polls and Smear Calls: Tele-campaign Dirty Tricks: Political ads disguised as phone polls.

- Assassination by the Press: Memetic worms devour the carcass of the press. A parody of media-fanned conspiracy theories.

### "Pranks are symbolic gestures, but they are not merely symbolic gestures. They are symbolic weapons ideally suited to vanquish foes that rule in turn by the use of symbols." -- d0k H0l0day

### Extraordinary popular delusions, scams and the madness of crowds:

####

- The Tulip Mania of 17th-century Holland.

- Milli Vanilli and the Scapegoating of the Inauthentic

- Charles K. Ponzi -- originator of the "Ponzi Scheme."

- The Sexygirls Scam -- Free software for viewing erotic pictures quietly uses your modem to call a $3/minute phone number on Moldova!

- The 419 Coalition -- home for information about "The Nigerian Scam." After a fool and his money part ways, the money often vacations in Nigeria.

- A Bre-X chronology -- How one company made zillions announcing it was mining nonexistant gold until they were caught in 1997.

- Pyramid Schemes -- Bargain basement Ponzi schemes for the millions who believe in getting something for nothing.

- Scam Alerts -- A catalog of ways in which money is redistributed from the ignorant and trusting to the unethical and ruthless.

- Introduction to Net Scams and Hoaxes

- The South-Sea Bubble: valueless stock sells like hotcakes.

- The Impact of McCarthyism -- The U.S.A.'s anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s.

- Shroud of Turin -- Relics R Us.

- Pons' and Fleischmann's Cold Fusion. Would you like cream & sugar with that?

- Troubles reported in the public schools, then and now: Why, in my day, things was diff'rent.

- The LSD Tattoo urban legend: Mickey Mouse has some strychnine for your kindergartener.

- Cult Archaeology, Pseudoscience, and Creationism Topics

- The O.J. Simpson drama. What the 20th Century will be remembered for, if you ask me.

- IdEAL ORDER Psychic TV: Hoax or delusions of reference? You make the call.

- The Book of Mormon and even more: P.T. Barnum ain't got nothin' on this, baby.

- The Church of Scientology: L. Ron's classic remake of the old religion scam.

- This could go on forever, so: The Yahoo! religion index will do nicely for comparisons of the "I know that my explanation of the unknowable is better than your explanation of the unknowable" arguments and associated snake-oil.

- Mystic Takes Pulpit to Read 'Love Letter' From Jesus: Yup, this sort of thing didn't die out in centuries past...

- Creators Admit Unix, C Hoax: Some pranks go too far.

### "Hoaxes are like those old black and white films where a bolt of lightning illuminates for a split second the murderer in the upstairs bedroom with the knife raised above his head. The weird light they cast allows us to glimpse the cultural weather that let them happen."

### Martians and Monsters:

####

- The War of the Worlds: Orson Welles' panic-inducing radio show.

- The Hot-Headed Naked Ice Borer -- No less a personality than the Rev. Ivan Stang was taken in (perhaps deliberately) by these Antarctic creatures documented in the April edition of Discover.

- April Fools from Discover magazine

- Life discovered on moon (1835): They're sort of like bipedal bats. A newspaper ran with this one and their circulation skyrocketed.

- CBS's Noah's Ark hoax: CBS ran a ludicrous story about the discovery of Noah's Ark, but an out-of-work actor made up the whole thing.

- The Earth is Flat, not round, you silly people!

- Beware of the South American dog-eating eagle.

- Jing Huiwen, the Orson Welles of China: Beware the Sibuxiang beast!

- The Loch Ness Monster

- The Bigfoot Research Project.

- The Hairy Hominid Archives

- The case of the Cottingley fairies and more -- they fooled Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

- The Cardiff Giant and more, and "Iowa-born hoax parted fools, money", and "Cardiff Giant might go on tour after 50 years", and even a Yahoo! index -- Another classic fraud/hoax.

- The Mollusca Information Center: Beware the clam. This sexually-transmitted disease is actually sought-out in some quarters.

- Fucking With the Brains of the Normals -- Creating web pages like "Black Market Babies" and "Americans for the Destruction of War Memorials" and then tracking the negative feedback.

- Astro-nots fake the moon landing: I'd be a lunatic not to include this here.

- The Centaur Excavations at Volos: An exhibit of a centaur skeleton at a university library.

- The Roswell Tourism Incident: UFOs is big bizness.

- The Hill Top Memo: A fake, or have they known about little green men all along?

- Crop Circles and how to make them.

- The Alien Autopsy Film: You can fool some of the people all of the time.

- Salem -- National Geographic takes us on a tour of the 17th-Century witchhunts in New England.

- Witchhunt Information Page: Information about those modern witchhunts, the search for ritual child sexual abusers.

- Ghost Stories

- The Chupacabra Home Page

### This page created and maintained by Ishmael Gradsdovic