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Hoaxes & Pranks

Author of Chinese prostitute blog revealed to be married man
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/wor ... 86072.html
CLIFFORD COONAN in Beijing

Sat, Oct 01, 2011

CHINA HAS its own “Belle de Jour”, as the microblog of supposed sex worker Ruo Xiaoan, which had more than 250,000 followers, has been exposed as having been written by a 31-year-old male editor seeking fame.

Far from being a 22-year-old prostitute, who had over 3,000 clients since she was just 15, the author of the blogs is a married man with a family who lives in Hangzhou in eastern China, and whose surname is Lin, the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau said on its website.

So well written were the microblog entries that the character became known as “China’s most educated prostitute”.

Mr Lin has been charged 500 yuan (€57) for causing a public nuisance and for “cheating the public”. He had been a busy sex blogger, posting 401 entries on his Sina Weibo account, and some entries about Ruo Xiaoan were reposted as many as 10,000 times.

He told the police he only did it because he wanted to get famous online. The comments online have been generally supportive.

“There are many writers like him on the internet, but he was fined because he used Weibo, his writing is excellent and Ruo Xiaoan as a creation is a success,” wrote Kawei-Rabbit.

Mr Lin’s microblog has been permanently shut down. The government is currently trying to stop Sina Weibo and other Weibo networks being used as platforms for dissent or for other socially unacceptable activities in China.

LingLuan Sister wrote how she loved reading about Xiaoan and said she had left lots of comments.

“Now I see that ‘she’ is in fact a man, is married, and has a son.

“Maybe it’s not too bad what happened, though.”

It was Mr Lin’s decision to compose a list of Xiaoan’s top clients, which included policemen, university professors and local celebrities, that started the hunt for the author.

Mr Lin was tracked down and found by mobile phone triangulation, and reportedly was caught in flagrante delicto composing another steamy entry for his literary heroine.

His creation has been compared to literary greats in the tradition of fictional prostitutes through the ages, ranging from Fanny Hill to Suzie Wong to Séverine Serizy aka Belle de Jour.

This appears to be no accident – Mr Lin apparently translated sex scenes from foreign-language texts, including The Secret Diary of a Call Girl by Brooke Magnanti, who wrote under the pseudonym of Belle de Jour.

The news came on the same day as the government said the number of internet users in China had surpassed 500 million.
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Duchy stuck for words over 'treacle mine'
Friday, February 24, 2012 Western Morning News

A new tourist attraction has "opened" in Cornwall – but it could leave those trying to find it in a sticky situation.
The gleaming brown sign standing off the A30 near St Columb Major may look the real deal, but the destination of Talskiddy Treacle Mine is just an elaborate hoax.

Luke Bazeley, 27, claims to be boss of Talskiddy Treacle Mine Corp

The sign is believed to have been put up by disgruntled locals, who were furious to learn that the Duchy of Cornwall had lodged papers with the Land Registry to claim mineral rights under their homes.

However, the Duchy has failed to see the funny side – and refused to comment on the new treacle mine.

Luke Bazeley, 27, who said he worked his way up from a treacle-driller to managing director of Talskiddy Treacle Mine Corp, thought the sign could have been put up by a disaffected mineworker.
"I really think the sign at the junction of the A39 was a lighthearted joke by a disgruntled resident, possibly an employee of the mine. This follows the recent news that Prince Charles and the Duchy own the rights to mineral extraction under Talskiddy.
"Although it's said that nothing will come of this, I think that as the current climate is cold as far as Talskiddy treacle's market value is concerned, this worried some local employees."

Talskiddy residents first heard about the claims in a letter sent to them by the Land Registry. The Duchy must officially register ancient rights if it is to keep them beyond October 2013.
It said the registration did not mean it had any intentions of mining the land.

Mr Bazeley said: "Our aim at Talskiddy Mine Corp is to work closely with the surrounding community, and I myself recently entered Mr Cornwall as a former Mr Talskiddy to try to raise funds for the Treacle Centre, a local drop-in and, if you like, community centre.
"We've now been successful in completion of this project and the centre is thriving from groups such as Talskiddy Zumba, the Treacleteers Morris dancing group and, more recently, Talskiddy Scientology Group."

Mayor of St Columb David Swindells said: "The Duke of Cornwall is trying to claim the land and minerals of the people of Talskiddy, but this is a Mad Hatter idea. This isn't Alice In Wonderland and if he continues, he might find himself in a sticky situation."

A Cornwall Council spokesman said it was "now aware of the unauthorised illegal direction sign to this unknown destination".
"However, to keep the local community sweet, we will allow the sign to remain for a further few days before it is removed." 8)

http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/Duchy-s ... story.html
 
Dutch 'bird-man' takes to the sky with home-made wings
21 March 2012 Last updated at 21:30

[video (rather blurry)]

A Dutch engineer claims to have flown using home-made wings.
James Smates got the idea from his grandfather's sketches and Leonardo da Vinci's wing drawings.

The BBC's Ros Atkins explains.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17468907

The beeb's commentator suggests this is the result of photo-editing, and I'm inclined to agree. JS appears to flap the wings using his arms, although arm muscles are not as strong as those in the legs, and flying bicycles haven't been hugely succesful so far.

But I'd love to be proved wrong! 8)
 
The DT has the dutch video (with triumphalistic music :roll: ), and calls him Smeets, not Smates:

Dutch engineer 'flies' using custom built 'human bird wings' in viral video
British university educated engineer Jarno Smeets claims to have achieved birdlike flight with a set of man-made wings in a video that has spread rapidly around the internet.
[video]
3:10PM GMT 21 Mar 2012

In a video shot at a park in the Hague on March 18, Mr Smeets is seen using his arms to flap the wings as he appears to successfully achieve take-off, flight and landing.

“I have always dreamed about this. But after eight months of hard work, research and testing it all payed off,” Mr Smeets said on his YouTube page.
Claiming to have based his bird-like contraption on sketches from his grandfather, the project can be traced from its origins on the Dutch mechanical engineer's website.

After studying at the University of Coventry, Mr Smeets claims to have worked with neuromechanics expert Bert Otten to create a design based on the mechanics used in robotic prosthetics which helps to give his muscles extra strength.

However, according to the former Coventry student, his own body strength was only capable of providing five per cent of the necessary power so to make up the shortfall he fitted extra motors to the wing suit. :shock:

When he landed after the 60-second flight, he said: “At one moment you see the ground moving away, and then suddenly you’re free, a really intense feeling of freedom. The true feeling of flying. A ******* magical moment. The best feeling I have felt in my life.”

However, the video has prompted a wealth of online speculation as to whether the flight test is indeed genuine.
One eagle-eyed viewer has pointed to the sudden appearance of sunglasses on the person adjusting Mr Smeets' camera before take off as proof that the success of the wing suit may owe more to clever editing techniques than mechanical engineering.

But, another online viewer makes the point, "I don't know anyone who would put those costs into a youtube video just for the hell of it."
Others seem happy to accept the video as a clever piece of fakery and a wonderful piece of entertainment.

Genuine or not, the short video is certainly popular and has now been watched nearly 800,000 times in a little over a day.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvid ... video.html
 
So all those ancient clips we saw of flight pioneers trying to fly like a bird with flapping wings did in fact have the right idea? If so, why didn't theirs work and this bloke's did?
 
gncxx said:
So all those ancient clips we saw of flight pioneers trying to fly like a bird with flapping wings did in fact have the right idea? If so, why didn't theirs work and this bloke's did?
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Er, no!

Notice which thread this is in. ;)
 
I saw this yesterday and my first thought was 'fake'.
The wings don't seem to flap enough for him to take off, in my opinion.
I think the man's acting is very good, though.
 
rynner2 said:
gncxx said:
So all those ancient clips we saw of flight pioneers trying to fly like a bird with flapping wings did in fact have the right idea? If so, why didn't theirs work and this bloke's did?
Click to expand...
Er, no!

Notice which thread this is in. ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know, I was entering into the spirit of investigation.
 
I heard about this, and a few people seem unsure whether it's a hoax. Having now watched the video, I'm pretty confident it must be, simply because the wings are too small. From memory, to lift a human off the ground by flapping, the wings need to be much larger than the ones in the video and/or flap significantly faster. (The speed of flapping relates to the size of the wings, remember the bumble bee.)

Of course, I'm not an aeronautical engineer, nor do I play one on television.

Jamie Hyneman has entered into the discussion, and I look forward to them attempting it on a future episode of Mythbusters.
 
If he could really fly, he'd demonstrate it in front of the world's media rather than release a dodgy video.

What a thing for an engineer to put on his CV - discovered how to allow men to fly! Employers would be fighting each other to hire him!

As it is, he clearly realises his set-up could never fly, hence his little 'joke' about fitting extra motors to his wing suit to make up the power his muscles couldn't supply. These motors, I surmise, are quite imaginary, and are a fictional embellishment to enhance the illusion of the flight the video appears to show.
 
Mythopoeika said:
It was an 'art project', apparently:

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/22/dutch-artist-admits-faking-viral-human-bird-wings-video/
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Thanks for finding that!

Rynner posted:
[video (rather blurry)]
Click to expand...
Ryan Martin, Technical Director at Industrial Light & Magic, and his colleagues told the techblog Gizmodo that the video's poor focus covers up most evidence of CGI
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I'm glad I called that one right. 8)

But it would be nice to fly like that... [sigh]
 
The cruellest of internet hoaxes

Attention seeking on the internet takes many forms, but the people who hoax online forums with tales of sick children are among the most painful, writes Jolyon Jenkins.

Little Charly Johns was a trouper.
She was only six years old and had cancer - but she fought it with determination. She was in and out of hospital as the disease advanced and retreated.

It was tough too for her mother Anna. She joined the Macmillan online cancer forum.
There she found support and help from people who knew exactly what she was going through.
For two years, Anna kept them updated on Charly's progress.

"On the whole she is doing great," she wrote. "She is happy, lively, giggly and very easily excitable. She is always the first to laugh at anything and the last to stop. Nobody could look at Charly now and have any idea of the things she has endured these past 14 months."

But in November last year, Charly lost her fight for life. On the Macmillan forum there was an outpouring of grief. People wrote poems in Charly's memory. They painted their fingernails pink in accordance with her last wishes - even men.

But it was all a lie. Charly did not exist. Neither did Anna.

The whole thing was a hoax, discovered when the church in Paris where Charly's funeral was to be held turned out to have no record of her.

The perpetrator, it transpired, was a teenage girl. The pictures of "Charly" were the girl herself when younger.
Many on the Macmillan forum refused to believe it. They had formed close online relationships with Anna. It seemed impossible that a teenager could have had such emotional maturity. Others left the forum in despair.

"These are some very desperate people," says Jackie Marshall, a member of the Macmillan forum. "People who may not have long to live, who are sharing burdens with complete strangers, because they are not comfortable sharing with families. The forum provides a lifeline."

It wasn't the first time Macmillan has been hoaxed, and Macmillan isn't the only forum to have been affected by impostors.
An American psychiatrist, Marc Feldman, has described it as "Munchausen by internet", similar to the well-known Munchausen syndrome, in which people fabricate illnesses to gain attention and sympathy.
It's no exaggeration to say there's an epidemic of MBI, and one which destroys the trust that underpins the forums.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18282277
 
I seem to remember that we've had a couple of those on here over the years.
 
Here's a BBC R4 programme about 'Munchausen's By Internet' -

Desperately Seeking Sympathy

Why would a perfectly healthy person pretend they had cancer? Or pretend that were pregnant with a foetus that could not survive long after birth? Munchausen's disorder has been known about for years but it's spread to the internet. People are constructing elaborate false identities, faking medical misfortunes and then posting online support forums. Few forums have escaped the imposters in what has become an epidemic of fakery.

In this programme Jolyon Jenkins speaks to those who have fallen victims of this kind of deception, as well as tracking down those who have perpetrated it. He learns how people who have genuinely suffered from medical misfortunes go online to offer help to other sufferers, only to find themselves taken for a ride by fakers. For some, learning that they have been getting into a deep and personal relationship with someone who turns out to be an emotional fraudster, is traumatic. Entire online communities sometimes feel devastated to learn that they have been harbouring an imposter.

The deception is often highly elaborate. "Munchausens by Internet" sufferers often invent multiple online personalities (known as "sock puppets"): to support each other husbands, boyfriends, relatives and friends who pop up to validate the main character. In one case, the Macmillan cancer forum was hoaxed by a teenage girl who posed as the mother of a young girl, "Charly", with terminal cancer. Members of the forum were gripped for months as the Charly's fortunes rose and fell. Eventually she lost her brave fight against cancer; forum members painted their nails pink in tribute to Charly's alleged last wishes and others wrote poetry in her memory. When it turned out that Charly was completely fictional, Macmillan forum members, many of whom had cancer themselves, were stunned. Some still refused to believe they had been corresponding with a teenager.

Imposters are not always detected but when they are they usually disappear without a word. Sometimes they reappear later under different names, but tracking down the real person behind the fake is virtually impossible. Why do they do it? Not for money. In interviews with two sufferers, Jolyon Jenkins hears of their desperate need for attention, their feelings of inadequacy in real life, and of loveless childhoods.

Other questions are raised by the phenomenon: why are people prepared to offer 24 hour support to characters who they don't know, and whose very existence they take on trust? And given the psychological damage done by perpetrators, shouldn't forum owners take more care to check that they are not providing a home for this new kind of online fraud?
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Pranksters Hijack Republican Live-Streamed Petition Drive
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/0 ... -petition/
By David KravetsEmail Author June 7, 2012 | 7:50 pm |

Congressional Republicans on Thursday abruptly halted what was surely the most innovative internet petition drive in history, after too much of the internet discovered it.

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) had invited voters to visit its “I Want Repeal” Tumblr to register opposition to Obama’s health care legislation — which the GOP called “Obamacare.” Visitors to the site could fill out a form with their name and an e-mail address, and watch on a live video stream as the hard copy of the filled-out petition, and everyone else’s, churned from an inkjet printer and piled up in the paper tray for delivery to the White House.

The GOP promoted the campaign heavily online with the hashtag #IWantRepeal, leading Thursday to the inevitable barrage of jokers entering made-up names for the sheer joy of seeing them spit off the printer before a live web audience.

By late Thursday afternoon, signers included Jesus Christ, Luigi Mario, Dimeball Darren, Una Bohmer, Queen Anime, HelpI’mStuckInthisPrinter, hello twitter, Piss Children, Boner Junkmonkey and Barf Vomit. A volunteer’s hand could periodically be seen darting into the frame to pull out a stack of freshly printed petitions before the tray could overflow.

Then, just after 6:30 p.m. EDT, the printer stopped and the frame froze. At press time it hasn’t come back.

Threat Level reached a spokeswoman for the committee soon after, but she said she was not immediately prepared to comment on the campaign. The name of the last legitimate signer of the petition before the printer fell still is currently trending on Twitter.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on a challenge to President Barack Obama’s medical plan soon. According to a New York Times/CBS News poll released Thursday, more than two-thirds of Americans hope the high court will strike down the measure.

Additional reporting by Angela Watercutter.
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Facebook 'likes' and adverts' value doubted
By Rory Cellan-Jones, Technology correspondent

A BBC investigation suggests companies are wasting large sums of money on adverts to gain "likes" from Facebook members who have no real interest in their products.
It also appears many account holders who click on the links have lied about their personal details.

A security expert has said some of the profiles appeared to be "fakes" run by computer programs to spread spam.
Facebook said it had "not seen evidence of a significant problem".

"Likes" are highly valued by many leading brands' marketing departments.
Once a user has clicked on a link the company it belongs to can then post content on their news feed, send them messages and alert their friends to the connection.

Facebook makes money by charging companies a fee to show adverts designed to attract new "likes".
Some companies have attracted millions of "likes".

But the BBC has been contacted by one marketing consultant who has warned clients to be wary of their value, and carried out an experiment that backed up his concerns.
The vast majority of Facebook's revenues come from advertising and its performance will be scrutinised when it releases its financial results on 26 July - the first such report since its flotation.

Earlier this year Facebook revealed that about 5-6% of its 901 million users might be fake - representing up to 54 million profiles.
Graham Cluley of the security firm Sophos said this was a major problem.
"Spammers and malware authors can mass-produce false Facebook profiles to help them spread dangerous links and spam, and trick people into befriending them," he said.
"We know some of these accounts are run by computer software with one person puppeteering thousands of profiles from a single desk handing out commands such as: 'like' as many pages as you can to create a large community.
"I'm sure Facebook is trying to shut these down but it can be difficult to distinguish fake accounts from real ones."

A spokesman for the social network said: "We don't see evidence of a 'wave of likes' coming from fake users or 'obsessive clickers'."
But Mr Cluley said it was in the firm's interest to downplay the problem.
"They're making money every time a business's advert leads to a phoney Facebook fan," he said.

Michael Tinmouth, a social media marketing consultant, ran Facebook advertising campaigns for a number of small businesses, including a luxury goods firm and an executive coach.
At first, his clients were pleased with the results. But they became concerned after looking at who had clicked on the adverts.
While they had been targeting Facebook users around the world, all their "likes" appeared to be coming from countries such as the Philippines and Egypt.
"They were 13 to 17 years old, the profile names were highly suspicious, and when we dug deeper a number of these profiles were liking 3,000, 4,000, even 5,000 pages," he said.

Mr Tinmouth pointed out a number of profiles which had names and details that appeared to be made up.
One, going by the name Agung Pratama Sevenfoldism, showed his date of birth as 1997 and said he had been a manager at Chevron in 2010. 8)
Mr Tinmouth said this seemed "unlikely".

An experiment by the BBC appears to have confirmed this was not a one-off issue.
The BBC created a Facebook page for VirtualBagel - a made-up company with no products.
The number of "likes" it attracted from Egypt and the Philippines was out of proportion to other countries targeted such as the US and UK.
One Cairo-based fan called himself Ahmed Ronaldo and claimed to work at Real Madrid. :shock:

Mr Tinmouth asked Facebook to investigate the issue of questionable profiles after one of his clients refused to pay for his adverts on the basis they had not reached "real people".
The company told him that the majority were authentic, and refused to meet him to discuss a refund.

Facebook told the BBC that Mr Tinmouth appeared to have sent out scattergun advertising to a global audience without specifying a target group.
"We would never recommend that anyone conduct business in this way," a spokesman said.

The BBC also spoke to a social marketing executive at one of the UK's biggest companies who said he was increasingly sceptical about the value of advertising on the social network.
"Any kind of investment in Facebook advertising has brought us very little return on sales," he said.

The executive, who did not want to be named, added that his company had found it could increase engagement with customers via the social network without buying adverts.
"The fans you get from advertising may not be genuine, and if they are genuine are they people who will engage with your brand?" he asked.
"The answer, more and more, appears to be no."

Facebook played down the issue of fake profiles.
"We've not seen evidence of a significant problem," said a spokesman.
"Neither has it been raised by the many advertisers who are enjoying positive results from using Facebook.
"All of these companies have access to Facebook's analytics which allow them to see the identities of people who have liked their pages, yet this has not been flagged as an issue.

"A very small percentage of users do open accounts using pseudonyms but this is against our rules and we use automated systems as well as user reports to help us detect them."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18813237
 
Advertising on the web must create more sheer hatred for companies than almost any other form of junk. The currency of the click is quite ridiculous but the system must cause some punters to part with real investment-cash for arsehole sites that do nothing but distract your searches with webpages generated on the fly from your search-strings. Ads which cause pages to load slowly and revolting pop-ups that reveal skanky creatures copulating underneath your windows . . .

If I wanted to see that, I'd open the curtains . . . :shock:
 
"Emmanuel Domenech was a Catholic priest who spent many years traveling through Mexico and the American Southwest before returning to France in the 1850s. Because of his experience with Native American culture, a librarian at the Bibliotheque de l'Arsenal in Paris brought to his attention, in the hope he could make sense of it, a curious document that had been filed away in a box there for over a century. The book consisted of hundreds of pages of strange, crudely drawn figures, resembling stick figures, many of them appearing to be urinating, copulating, whipping each other, and displaying enormously swollen genitals . . . "


Well I suppose a priest was the natural chap to call! :shock:

I don't suppose it's suitable for work. Depends what your work is, I suppose . . .

From the Museum of Hoaxes
 
Not sure I want to click on the link, but what made it a hoax?
 
The heiroglyphic figures were decoded as German words, such as Würst - it's not very shocking - just a lot of priapic stick-men.

I'm not sure I understood the decoding. Perhaps you chop the figures in half as they seem to be mirror-forms? A sort of smutty Voynich Minor piece of mystification.

I bet the librarian did it himself . . . 8)
 
I plucked up the courage to click the link, and I'm glad I did, thanks. The story's not much more than a step up from drastically misidentifying rude graffiti, is it? I admire the priest's dedication to his theory, I can't see the words either (but I can't speak German, so...)
 
That is pure brilliance James!

For instance, one hieroglyph showed several red lines. Domenech had interpreted this as the "Emblem of lightning, symbol of Divine wrath." The newspapers pointed out that a word scrawled above the lines looked like "Wurszd," the German word for sausage.
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roflmfao :lol:

This one made me think of Satanic Ritual abuse.

1860pictograph03.jpg
 
Re-reading it, I see that the German words were not decodings of the heiroglyphs but were written above the figures in more or less recognizable letters! It seems, the priest went on insisting that his learnèd interpretation was the correct one, while half of Germany was on the floor laughing! I particularly like the fact that the French Government had paid for the book's publication as a great contribution to the study of Native American culture.

I have just noticed that the whole of the manuscript in available on Wikimedia Commons here

"Livre des sauvages" - which is to say, Book of Sausages! :)

When you come to look at the images en masse, it does seem possible to interpret them as a comic-strip illustrative of the development of an economy with recurring themes of agriculture, domination, exchange, possibly communion and warfare. The common symbol of two circles between two lines and variants seem to be numbers, which are often associated with figures in conventional notation. It begins to look more like an obsessive piece of Outsider Art than the random smutty fantasies of a schoolboy. I doubt, however, if prolonged study would produce a plain narrative from these images. :?

Domenech's whole book - the French is not too difficult - is on Google books here

Various comments and observations here
 
JamesWhitehead said:
"Livre des sauvages" - which is to say, Book of Sausages! :)
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:lol:

'Book of Savages', more like. :D
 
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