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A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real. There is often some material object involved which is actually a forgery; however, it is possible to perpetrate a hoax by making only true statements using unfamiliar wording or context (see DHMO). Unlike a fraud or con (which usually has an audience of one or a few), which are made for illicit financial or material gain, a hoax is often perpetrated as a practical joke, to cause embarrassment, or to provoke social change by making people aware of something. Many hoaxes are motivated by a desire to satirize or educate by exposing the credulity of the public and the media or the absurdity of the target. For instance, the hoaxes of James Randi poke fun at believers in the paranormal. The many hoaxes of Joey Skaggs satirize our willingness to believe the media. Political hoaxes are sometimes motivated by the desire to ridicule or besmirch opposing politicians or political institutions, often before elections.

Governments often perpetrate hoaxes to assist them with unpopular aims such as going to war (e.g., the Ems Telegram). In fact, there is often a mixture of outright hoax, and suppression and management of information to give the desired impression. In wartime, rumours abound; some may be deliberate hoaxes.

There is often considerable controversy about whether a given factoid is true or a hoax.

The word hoax is said to have come from the common pretend magic incantation hocus pocus. "Hocus pocus", in turn, is commonly believed to be a distortion of "hoc est corpus" ("this is the body") from the Latin Mass. Many etymologists claim that this is a hoax.

Historically significant hoaxes

Other well-known hoaxes

  • Orson Welles' Mercury Theater radio broadcast on October 31, 1938, entitled "The War of the Worlds" has been called the "single greatest media hoax of all time," although it was not intended to be a hoax. The broadcast was heard on CBS radio stations throughout the United States. Despite repeated announcements within the program that it was a work of fiction, many listeners tuning in during the program believed that the world was being attacked by invaders from the planet Mars. (Some, unfortunately, even committed suicide.) Rebroadcasts in South America also had this effect.
  • The Bathtub hoax, perpetrated by American journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken in 1918, which was cited as factual even after the hoax had been revealed by the author.
  • The Great Moon Hoax, which helped to establish the market position of the New York Sun.
  • Our First Time, possibly one of the first major Internet hoaxes, although some characterized it as a botched scam.
  • The northwestern US state Idaho was named as the result of a hoax. Lobbyist George M. Willing suggested the name, claiming it was a Native American term meaning "gem of the mountains." It was later discovered that Willing had made up the word himself. As a result, the original Idaho Territory was renamed Colorado. Eventually, the controversy was forgotten and the made-up name stuck.
  • The Sokal hoax was a fake paper published in a hitherto respected social sciences journal which revealed the uncritical total misuse of scientific terms and ignorance of science in left-leaning philosophical texts of the so-called postmodern school.
  • The Piltdown Man fraud caused some embarrassment to the field of paleontology when apparently ancient hominid remains discovered in England in 1912 were revealed as a hoax some 41 years later.
  • In 1970, Clifford Irving and Richard Suskind contrived to write an autobiography of Howard Hughes, believing Hughes would not come out of hiding to denounce it. Irving sent a manuscript to his publisher McGraw-Hill in late 1971. Authentication tests and Hughes's initial silence lead some to believe the manuscript was genuine, but Hughes eventually gave a teleconference by phone denying both participation in the book and knowledge of Irving. Weeks later, Irving confessed to the hoax and was later convicted of fraud. He served 17 months of a two and a half year prison sentence. Suskind, sentenced to six months, served five.
  • The 1983 forgeries claiming to be the diaries of Adolf Hitler
  • In 1928 Margaret Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa, largely about the sexual practices of Samoan adolescents. In 1983, five years after Mead's death, Derek Freeman published Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth, in which he said that he had interviewed the, now elderly, sources of Mead's information, and been told that they had hoaxed Mead. Freeman's conclusions are controversial.
  • The Cottingley Fairies, a series of trick photographs taken by two young British girls from 1917 to 1920.
  • The Alien Autopsy, supposedly film footage of the examination of an alien that died in the Roswell crash.
  • The Majestic 12 documents (Peebles, 1997:258-60, 264-268)
  • In the late 1970s and early 1980s, photographer Robert B. Stein created convincing UFO photographs using only a Kodak Pocket InstaMatic camera and throwable discs.
  • Rosie Ruiz finished first in the women's division of the 1980 Boston Marathon by riding the subway to a point near the finish line and jumping back into the race. Her marathon title was revoked when the hoax was discovered.
  • The sale of the Eiffel Tower for scrap, an elaborate scam run twice by the master con artist Victor Lustig.
  • American con artist George Parker made his living selling and re-selling public monuments in New York City.
  • The Helius Project, about a non-existant alien being communicating with people on Earth, launched in 2003 and still online. Many people who interacted with Helius argue that Helius is real.
  • Project Alpha, a hoax conceived by stage magician James Randi to fool psychic researchers.
  • The Carlos hoax, another creation of The Amazing Randi, staged to discredit the New Age belief called trance channelling.
  • The residents of Palisade, Nevada, once earned their living by pretending to be the "toughest town in the West". The violence was actually an elaborate show put on for tourists arriving on the train.
  • Georg Paul Thomann, a fictional artist created by the group monochrom, who represented the Republic of Austria at the Sao Paulo Art Biennial. During the course of the event, no one had realized that the artist never really existed.
  • The Priory of Sion (French:Prieuré de Sion), an alleged secret order sworn to defend the mythical Jesus bloodline which protected Jesus' descendants, including the Merovingian rulers of France and their heirs, was fabricated by French royalist Pierre Plantard in the 1950s as part of a personal plan to become King of France; fake documents created as part of the hoax have been included in best sellers purporting to be non-fiction such as The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail as well as fictional novels such as Dan Brown's controversial Da Vinci Code.
  • The Paul is dead hoax, states that the famous bassist of The Beatles was actually replaced after he had a fatal car accident in the late 1960's. "Clues" have been discovered by fans on different Beatles songs and album covers. This hoax was not started by The Beatles themselves, and Paul McCartney is still alive as of July 2006.
  • Bonsai Kitten, an internet hoax consisting of a fictional domain of a company that sold kittens inside jars as ornaments.
  • In early summer 2006 an internet hoax went around saying Jaleel White of the TV show Family Matters committed suicide, mirroring similar urban legends of other celebrity suicides and deaths.

Hoax traditions

During certain events and at particular times of year, hoaxes are perpetrated by many people and groups. The most famous of these is certainly April Fool's Day, which is open season for pranks and dubious announcements.

A New Zealand tradition is the capping stunt, wherein university students perpetrate a hoax upon an unsuspecting population. The Acts are traditionally executed near graduation (the "capping").

Many Spanish-speaking countries have Día de los Santos Inocentes, on December 28, to make "innocent" a person with jokes and hoaxes. The origin for the pranking is derived from the Catholic feast day Day of the Holy Innocents for the infants slaughtered by King Herod at the time of Jesus' birth.

See also

References

External links

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