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A hoax revealed

As a skeptic, like it or not, I’ve gotten something of a reputation in my family as the go-to person for “is this real?” queries regarding Internet memes.  I spend way too much time doing other people’s Google-searches and Snopes-checks.  So I’ve gotten something of a nose for an Internet hoax when I see one.  Of course one of the biggest clues is that one of my relatives sends me the thing as part of a chain of forwarded e-mails.  If it contains the text “forward this to five friends” or similar, it is hard to wipe the scent of hoax off of it.

But Tuesday of this week something a bit astonishing started happening.  My facebook feed became full of the same link being forwarded by dozens and dozens of people.  After who knows how many times, I finally clicked on it to see what the fuss was about.  It was there that I met “Jenny” the girl who quit her job with a white-board.

It was a funny pictorial essay about a girl who quits her job by revealing to everyone at the office that the boss is a bit of a douche.  Very amusing, but for a few reasons it didn’t ring true to me.  First of all, it looked like a staged photo shoot to me.  Second, and not to insult the many beautiful people out there who are not models, but the girl in the shot looked too much like a model or actress to me.  That was reinforced by the fantastic job she did of wordlessly explaining her emotions.
So in my mind it looked fake.  I didn’t have time to do any further research and I thought it was funny so I forwarded it to my friends with this caveat:

“This is funny. It looks completely fake to me – but it is funny. Also the website is probably NSFW even though the picture series itself is tame enough.”

I was surprised at how many people thought it was real although it seemed pretty obviously meant to entertain even if it was faked.  Things like this are like a comic version of The Blair Witch Project.  Fake things with an air of verisimilitude can be funnier than just a straight up piece of fiction.

But if I’d done my homework the answer was out there.  The site that posted the photos, thechive.com, had done a casting call for a “girl-next-door” type model (see that on Boing Boing). Perhaps more importantly, the guys behind the site had already done to previous hoaxes of some magnitude, the Donald Trump $10,000 tip hoax and the Texting Virgin.  Skeptics advise you to be careful about believing anything, but I don’t think I need to bring up boys, crying and wolves here.

So does it matter that only a few of my Facebook friends seemed to think this story was fake?  Nope.  I haven’t heard anybody complain much.  The story made people laugh, and the actress involved, Elyse Porterfield, didn’t hurt many people’s eyes.  And will the guys behind this hoax again?  I’m sure they’ll think of something.

And what was the point of the hoax?  Oh there’s been speculation that they’re mocking the media for their lack of research.  That sounds like James Randi and the Carlos experiment.  But I suspect it’s something not quite so noble – the ad revenue of millions of eyes.  Either way, I’m sure everyone will benefit from this hoax, especially Ms. Porterfield.  But will it actually remind the media to be more cautious in their exuberence?  I think not.

Ironically, at the same time this hoax was going on a real world drama involving a flight attendant was unfolding that was just as entertaining in its own way.  But Ben Radford has explained that this story too wasn’t quite what it seemed to be. Is nothing amusing and unusual going on in the word?  Well this morning I saw a man wearing urban camouflage riding a large unicycle down Barrett Parkway.  Yes, technically I didn’t get photos and I didn’t forward those photos to my friends, but it was a great reminder to me that there are plenty of unusual things going on out there that are both amusing and real.  I just had to get off of the Internet for a few minutes to see it.