[UA] What's the hoax?

[Tim Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: Joe Iglesias <kidklipot at my-deja.com>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2001 12:57 PM
Subject: RE: [UA] What's the hoax?


> >Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 12:38:51 -0700 (PDT)
> >From: Kevin Elmore <kelmore at rocketmail.com>
>
> >> P.S. -- Regarding putting the script on the internet as a
> >> hoax... er, hm, all I'll say is this: I've seen one RPG
> >> company try a cute hoax promotion and it turned out very,
> >> very, very badly.
> >What was it?  I'd hate to accidentally follow its
> >footsteps.
>
> That would be White Wolf's announcement on their web page that "we have
been bought out by
> a radical libertarian organization" that was some kind of vague tie-in to
(the partially Stolze-written)
> Hunter: the Reckoning.
>
> I think that one failed because a) It was kind of incoherent and b) It was
the culmination of
> months of WW playing coy about what exactly the game was about.  Neither
of which would really
> affect the proposed "dumping a fake porn screenplay somewhere" idea, I
think...

In addition, they came right out and said it, which robbed 98% of the fun
out of the discovery process. If you have to go to the effort to track all
this stuff down, it's your fault that you fell for it, and since you made
that investment of time / attention, you're more likely to buy into the lie.
I don't recall the Hunter timetable right now, but I think they based it off
of The Blair Witch Project phenomena, which used it to AMAZING success.
Something subtle, like the Web of Deception (one of which was pointed out
here http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,43422,00.html ) and this more
recent one for Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back (http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/)
could work very well, since it allows the reader to dig his own hole, and
jump into it himself.  What we need is a mole in the Internet Movie Database
and a few other choice sites to 'plant' this sort of info.  They're uptight
about it now, but give them a few years, and the famous movies that never
were (like 'O Brother, Where Art Thou' was, until the Coen Brothers made a
movie of that name) will start popping up, much the same way that every Rare
Book Room seems to have a copy of The Necronomicon listed in its database.



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