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Hoaxes & Hoaxing: Project Idea Of The Hoax Hoax

A

ACreepierFolklaw

Gone But Not Forgotten
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A few years back i perpetrated a series of hoax photographs of a UFO. you can see my work here:
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread558451/pg1
I did it by photoshoping in a large light from an airport into a photograph of the view from my then apartment window.
the reason for doing this was as an experiment to see how much the images would be shared around various sights, (10,100,000 according to google) and how long it would take people to discover the smoking gun hidden in the deep exif data. I was pleased to discover that not many were convinced by the fraud, and that the smoking gun was eventually detected by ATS.

But what I found very fascinating was the number of people that claimed to see hoax in a way that there was none at all. meaning they dismissed it as hoax because they 'could see wires holding it up' etc. there were no wires to see, as it was held in the sky by photoshop alone lol.

That's when a thought struck me (or re-occured) that people seem to not critically assess claims that something strange is a hoax as rigorously as they check the claims themselves. This seems to me to expose a massive bias towards the dull or uninteresting.

So my idea is this; in a similar way to James Randi's “Carlos” hoax, (whether or not it actually occurred as he claimed) could expose the willingness to believe in 'woo' without critical assessment, wouldn't it be possible to create a hoax hoax to demonstrate how people are willing to dismiss the Fortean as a hoax without critically assessing the claim?
 
From memory,a paranormal investigator did something similar and wrote a letter to the FT about it.
He chose a suitably spooky location,then wrote a letter to the local newspaper relating a ghost experience there and asking if anyone else had a similar experience at that location.
As you may expect,he got a few replies from people who claimed to have seen the ghost he completely made up (an old woman I think,but this was a long time ago) and also had people relating experiences from BEFORE his experience.
Exactly what he proved is up for debate, but interesting nonetheless.
Jenny Randles wrote a fascinating piece about Ufo 'flaps' showing how various factors could create what seemed a major series of incidents.
Hoaxes, fantasy prone individuals 'conflation' (adding bits to make a simple experience seem more complex) misidentification of ordinary objects,perhaps because of heightened awareness, and interestingly,experiences that did not actually happen during the current flap which are genuinely mysterious sent in by people who now think the time is right to share their experience.
Nick from the West Midland Ghost Investigators posted on a local forum some videos sent to him which he thought were hoaxes created to generate the same kind of reaction as your project, he thought it may be something to do with a school or college.
They were not particularly convincing though,or at least,not to anyone who knows what a bit of fishing line can do :D
 
i think you missunderstand my concept; i want to construct a hoax hoax. meaning to fake the explanation as a hoax, not the initial thing.
argh its really diffiicult to explain.

ok hypothetically, imagine there was a genuine ufo photo. that is a photo of an alien craft. then someone photoshops in to that genuine image evidence of fakery. so the evidence of fakery is fake, but the image is genuine.

now really whether the original pic/evidence whatever is genuine or not is moot. the question is will people swallow the fake evidence of fakery uncritically?

Exposing a bias towards dullness.
 
I think I get it? You suggest that claims that a photo/video/whatever is a hoax are less critically examined than claims it's real. So if something genuine was posted the hoax claims would be more respected than the supporters of the reality.

Thereby skewing the commentariat towards supposing everything fortean is a hoax and that means life is never that interesting or weird after all.

I think it is a splendid idea to test your observations...
 
It seems to me one big problem in experimentally testing this notion is how one may reasonably draw equivalence between an acceptor's (person who believes in the item as is) basis / rationale for accepting the item as authentic versus a refuter's basis / rationale for deciding it's a hoax.

Acceptors need only believe in the item at face value as providing evidence for whatever interpretation they project onto the item.

Refuters commonly feel the need to cite some particular feature of the item or its context (e.g., "I can see the wires holding it up!"; "That's obviously a hubcap, not a flying saucer!") as providing evidence for dismissing an interpretation of what the item may represent.

In other words - refuters tend to be more specific in claiming an objective basis for their position.

Another confounding factor is the status of the item in question. Let's consider the most basic case - an item that seems anomalous but has NOT been deliberately manipulated (e.g., PhotoShopped).

A photo of a hubcap sailing overhead in mid-air is just that, and nothing more. As has been demonstrated all too many times, an acceptor may interpret it as authentic evidence of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. It is the acceptor's UFO interpretation that the refuter targets - not necessarily the photo per se. The issue at hand isn't the item - it's the interpretation projected onto the item.

Naturally, the refuter may address issues with the item itself (e.g., provenance) in the course of dismissing the acceptor's interpretation. Acceptors rarely get so analytical about the item per se, unless challenged by a refuter into doing so.

This situation has become much more confused now that (a) so many people have the means to manipulate or manufacture items to put forward as purported evidence and (b) so many people are aware that such means are widespread, and items may not represent what they seem to portray at face value. Credulity once tilted folks toward being an acceptor at face value. One could argue that increased sensitivity to the risks of relying on face value alone is tilting folks more and more toward incredulity as the default response.

Yet another confounding factor is that acceptors and refuters often tend to stick with their initial position in light of subsequent evidence. A refuter would immediately accept your hoax-ified photo as proof of his / her position, whereas a diehard acceptor might well claim it's disinformation indicative of a cover-up (and hence supportive of his original acceptance). This means you're always going to have to deal with some sort of bias effect.

I see what you're saying, but I'm not readily seeing how one could unambiguously test your hypothesis.
 
garrick92 said:
I don't know about your experiment -- although my initial thought is where on earth are you going to find a 100 per cent certified genuine photo of a fortean phenomenon in the first place -- but your observations about people willing themselves to believe something is a hoax is interesting indeed. You ought to write FT an article about your findings.
Click to expand...

You beat me to it...yeah, where will you find a genuine UFO photo? I don't think any UFO/ghost/whatever photo has yet been proved to be genuine...big problem there.
 
Doh!
Anyway,the penny has finally dropped.

It usually goes:

'Evidence' presented.
Evidence disputed.
Sources reported.
Sources discredited.
Arguments about small details.
Small details used to discredit whole.
Arguments about semantics.
Insults.
Godwin.
 
Interesting question. It reminds me of Kit Pedler's 'experiment' in a public talk on the paranormal in the 1970's. He switched on a cassette tape of people meditating and asked people to concentrate and make the 'ommm' sound to aid meditation to see if they could get an object to lift clear of the table.

The object did indeed lift off the table, but, with the aid of a powerful magnet mechanism. The 'omm' sound was to disguise the sound of the magnet.

Afterwards he said both sceptics and believers spoke to him. Some believers said that they could see the psychic rods holding the object aloft. But interestingly, the sceptics firmly stated the the object did not lift off the air, and that it was an optical illusion.

The sceptic's observations were false, the object did indeed rise. How can one see a sceptic as more reliable that a believer?

I recall it from the introduction to the book 'Mind Over Matter' by Kit Pedler.
 
Don't know if it applies to this thread, but you have put me in mind of some observations made by Jan Harold Brundvant (The Vanishing Hitchhiker, The Choking Doberman, etc.). He has reported various attempts to launch artificial urban legends/FOAF tales -- all of which, as far as he knew, failed. So sometimes a hoax never gets off the ground.

I wonder how many times someone has tested a fake UFO/ghost/Bigfoot/ whatever photo on a couple of people -- who promptly laughed him out the door, so he gave up on the hoaxing idea?
 
It's an interesting idea, of course it's debateable how objective anyone is when presented with evidence of the paranormal, confirmation bias would ensure support from those who have a predispotion towards belief,whilst some sceptics probably would not accept the reality of ufo's if one landed on their front lawn.
Still,it's in the true Fortean ethos of discovery, and I wish you all the best.
 
Hoaxes are the fog that obscures the paranormal-how can you ever prove something after a few hoaxes have muddied the water.

The effect was exploited by the security establishment of the Cold War-by bringing ridicule on those who reported seeing UFO's, they made people 'unsee' experimental aircraft-You gotta fly 'em sometime, and even places like Groom Lake can be observed.

Remember, the SR-11 'Blackbird' first flew in 1963, and that was a very unusual aircraft.

Big, very big balloons are still being flown for research and some covert purposes. This dates back to the Japanese balloon bombs of WWII, and before. Even with our various orbiters, there is still a need to investigate the upper atmosphere.

Bigfoot is not likely to be real, but all the monkey suit hoaxes have made an investigation even more difficult. Loch Ness is a similar case,there are several mockup monsters in the Loch that were used in films, and were forgotten

We enter a world with few secrets-about time, too!

Fort would be sad, he loved mystery for its own sake, and seldom judged the stories he cited. Even when they had fairly obvious explainations. Get a few dozen enthusiasts, add crackpots, stir for a few years, serve in paperback form... By now, we have two Roswell crashes-the second one dreamed up to paper over defects in the story of the first one.

No matter, the inquiry is the thing, solutions spoil the fun!
 
The SR71, my favourite airplane,straight from the Gerry Anderson drawing
board :D
Chuck Yeager said "It went up like a homesick angel"
The Lockheed skunkworks and the achievements at Groom Lake tend to get lost amidst the ufo fog
Shame.
 
amarok2005 said:
Don't know if it applies to this thread, but you have put me in mind of some observations made by Jan Harold Brundvant (The Vanishing Hitchhiker, The Choking Doberman, etc.). He has reported various attempts to launch artificial urban legends/FOAF tales -- all of which, as far as he knew, failed. So sometimes a hoax never gets off the ground.

I wonder how many times someone has tested a fake UFO/ghost/Bigfoot/ whatever photo on a couple of people -- who promptly laughed him out the door, so he gave up on the hoaxing idea?
Click to expand...
The Slender Man urban legend is a recent purposeful attempt at an urban legend, to the point where a few people believe the Slender Man has become real thanks to a Tulpa effect, where enough thought on something brings it into being.
 
The Mothman is a god example of the effect.

I was there during the actual flap, and most of the foofaraw was added later. I made a sick joke about the Point Pleasant Monster causing the Silver Bridge collapse on a cable access show I briefly hosted, and I'm sure others had a similar thought. The idea was not widespread.

Somehow, the events(probably started by a sighting of a sick or elderly Sand Hill Crane, a dropout from the migration) mutated into the legend of today, helped along by a rather confused book on UFOs. and the odd story of Indrid Cold, a spook for our time.

Time muddles and dims our memories, sometimes we get wholly fictional recollections if we are not very careful..
 
On memory,so true, hitting 50 brought various dubious benefits,but the main culprit is 'remembering' things from films say as being different to what my memory insists happened before.
The common one is mixing up left and right, but I saw Kill Bill part 2 recently and could have sworn the reaction of Uma Thurman's Bride was different when Bill asks her if she has used that Pai Mai heart technique thing.
Then again.on a bus last year, which I have been on hundreds of times I noticed a row of houses that I would have gone to court on that I had never seen before :(
Ah well, anyway,Bogus social workers,anyone remember that flap?
 
Remember the bogus Socialist Workers? Ask them a few questions on the Labour theory of Value and they would run off.
 
ramonmercado said:
Remember the bogus Socialist Workers? Ask them a few questions on the Labour theory of Value and they would run off.
Click to expand...

:lol:
 
krakenten said:
The effect was exploited by the security establishment of the Cold War-by bringing ridicule on those who reported seeing UFO's, they made people 'unsee' experimental aircraft-You gotta fly 'em sometime, and even places like Groom Lake can be observed.

Remember, the SR-11 'Blackbird' first flew in 1963, and that was a very unusual aircraft.
Click to expand...
My favourite story about strange planes over Area 51, although it might have been about the captured MIGs, was that they often wore a gorilla mask while flying. If another pilot saw a gorilla flying a strange aircraft, they were less likely to report it, lest they be grounded for mental problems.

Or maybe, they really did have trained gorilla pilots, and that story was a blind.
 
Well y'know monkeys in space so perhaps. :D
My favourite bit is the dead bats having to be constantly cleared out of the F117A Stealth hangar.
Yeah,right.

The Bogus Socialist Worker,you always remember them visiting you,because,the paperwork!
 
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