Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with hoax

Am I gunshy after "Balloon Boy" or are there legitimate reasons to question whether Jessica Watson is really sailing around the globe?

kellygreen — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:56:36 -0800

Am I just gun-shy after the "Balloon Boy" hoax or are there legitimate reasons to question whether Jessica Watson is really sailing around the world? What evidence can you find to support the theory that this is another hoax and what evidence can you find that refutes that theory? Over the past week I have been captivated by the Jessica Watson story. Ms. Watson is an Australian teenager attempting to become the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe on her sailboat, unassisted. I read her blog each day and I even purchased a world map so I could follow along on her journey. Things were going smoothly with my new hobby until she posted this blog entry about finding a bunch of squid on deck that morning. I was puzzled as to why she posted a "stock" photo of herself instead of pictures of the squid and began to wonder whether something was amiss.

My skepticism grew when I then read this article which noted that Ms. Watson has decided not to release her precise position information lest she be chased down by the media. I also learned that Ms. Watson plans on sailing nonstop and will not be stopping for media photos in port. This is unusual as young sailors typically make stops in ports when circumnavigating the globe: Zac Sunderland made loads of stops and Michael Perham took a Christmas break. The sailors give interviews at port and pose for media photos as they travel to foreign lands.

I want to continue to believe this terrific story and cheer on Ms. Watson, but I also want to be a savvy media consumer. How do you answer either one or both of my two questions?

FauxtoshopFilter

mad_little_monkey — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:17:50 -0800

PhotoshopFilter: I'm looking for two things - recent photoshopped hoax pictures sent in by someone in the audience that the mainstream media has mistakenly printed or put on TV. Also any tips on detecting photoshopped photos would be appreciated. Even better if someone on the 'net outed them before MSM caught it. Sure - we've all seen the George Bush reading the upside down kids book, and the shark bites chopper guy. Anything else you have seen that recently has made it onto local television news, a news website, or into a local paper would be greatly appreciated, so would any tips on detecting photoshopped pictures. Photoshoppers are getting so much better than the MSM is at detecting them.

It's not real, dammit.

Skyanth — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:19:54 -0800

How do you deal with friends or family sending you (and everyone else in their address book) fake virus warnings and other hoaxes? Do you tell them to do a &$(#^% simple online search before they send the thing on to everyone they know or is it better to ignore them?

And if you do tell them, do you send the mail back to everyone who was on the list (even the people you don't know), hoping that you might catch another one who was going to make the same mistake (but using the same deplorable mechanism)?

If I send to all I feel like a pedant. If I ignore it I feel like I didn't take the chance to at least stop this branch of the hoax in its tracks (and I do believe that the internet would be a better place if everyone did this because then it wouldn't become a hoax in the first place). And I've tried educating them on the nature of hoaxes, but somehow they seem to lack the "this must be fake" alarm bells that some of us were born with so that doesn't seem to have any effect.

What do you do?

Holy Blithering $#&! I'm standing on the #*!@ing moon

johnstein — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 19:00:43 -0800

I want to share the truth of the Moon Landing with my friends... But the site is down. As anyone who clicked the link can see, the site is down. This is one of the funniest clips I've seen online and have wanted to show it to other people, but I can't find any mirrors of it anywhere and my googling hasn't turned up anything.

Does anyone by chance have this saved or know of a working mirror? Any tips on how to go about getting it? Is it by chance released in an 'onion' audio collection I'm unaware of? I just don't know the best way to go about finding this clip again.

Is AllWorldPrivateFunding.com legit?

waytogo! — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:02:35 -0800

Has anyone used All World Private Funding to get a loan? And if so, what was your experience?

Do you remember this website hoax about a huge mountain tunnel?

Glum — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 15:25:10 -0800

Does anyone remember an absurdly over hyped internet event/hoax that had something to with an enormous mountain tunnel? I'm fairly certain the guy was simply trying to drum up interest in his new book - if I remember correctly there was even a disclaimer on the website saying it was fiction.

The website had the name of a date if I remember correctly (i.e. www.march23.com) and the main focus was a series of photographs and a kind of diary of events (leading up to the date in the URL, which was in the future).

The photographs were of some kind of secret tunnel leading into a mountain (in australia?) and the author suspected a government cover-up (I think). Was it that he thought they were going to use it to launch a captured UFO?

Oh I don't know, but if you do please respond!

Crank calling with fake caller id?

melixxa600 — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 19:30:02 -0800

Is it possible to fake someone's caller ID to place a crank call? I think this just happened to me. It was my partner's cellphone number and name ID. I won't go into the details of the "call." I think it must have been an old recording, of him and someone else talking, etc., making me believe that his redial button just got pressed and he called me back by accident without realizing it or hearing me saying "Hello? Hello? Hello?" A rudimentary google seems to confirm that this is possible with current technologies. Is it? How elaborate of a hoax would this be to pull off? is there any way we can possibly figure out exactly what happened and where this call originated??

Snopesiquitte

Saucy Intruder — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 18:08:00 -0800

Miss Mefi Manners: What's the proper way to respond to a relative who has sent you a hoax email? So my grandma forwarded me an email warning (in giant red letters) that microwaving food in plastic containers will give you cancer. I promptly hit reply-all and sent the relevant snopes link.

Was this proper? I figured a reply all would help cut off this particular strand of the e-mail chain. But now that I think about it, it may have been embarrassing to my grandma to have all her friends know that she forwarded a hoax, and worse, she may not have known why I responded with the snopes link. (The reply I got was "Thanks for your thoughts on the subject.")

Emily Post is a little behind the times on the subject, so I figure I'd poll the audience.

Any good info on the asbestos in tampons hoax?

mdbell79 — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 11:27:27 -0800

Anyone know any good books or internet sites relating to the asbestos in tampons hoax? I'm doing some research on it, but I can't find anything more than surface level info.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, check here for the basic idea.

I Get the Feeling a Friend Is Making Up the Details of His Life -- How Can I Find Out the Truth?

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 15:10:24 -0800

A friend from junior high tracked me down by phone a few years ago (we'd been out of touch for about 15 years), which jump-started our friendship. We’ve never met up again in person (I left our home town years ago), but we stayed in touch via phone calls and email. For various reasons, however, I’ve begun to suspect that I’m being hoaxed in some way. I don't mean that I think this a stranger impersonating my friend, or that I’ve been swindled out of any money or anything. I've just started to get the funny feeling (due to inconsistencies, odd details, explanations that don’t always add up, etc.) that the story I've been given about where they're living, their career (supposedly a high-powered, adventurous one), etc. is just that -- a story that was made up, for some reason, to fool me after all these years.

My amateur detective skills pretty much begin and end with google, however, which has turned up nothing useful. I thought of checking military records (this person claims to have served after college) as a starting point, but I'm a civilian and so can’t access them. Of course I'm wary of the "find out the truth about anyone -- just $39.95!" online ads. Are there any (legitimate) resources I’m overlooking? Any other suggestions with how to deal with what has become an uncomfortable situation?

Is Brain Respiration a hoax?

mono blanco — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 01:00:04 -0800

Is Brain Respiration yet another New Age-y hoax, or what? (+) The enthusiasm and anecdotal quality of this article from the Guardian weirded me out. It's not the usual disinterested report you expect in a major publication. I've never heard of Brain Respiration before. And the thought of actually plowing through all the google links makes my brain cry out for oxygen.

Yet, still...I expect the Guardian to vet these things before opening up the gusher. So, dear Mefi community, is there anything to it? Anybody have anything good, bad or indifferent to report about (I cringe at the locution) "Brain Respiration"?