Adam Sandler is alive and well, thank you very much. But try telling that to those pesky Tweeters around the Interwebs. On Tuesday evening, a publicist for the Click actor shot down reports that the funnyman died in a Christmas Day fall off a cliff in Switzerland. You know — the same manner of demise [...]
Posts Tagged ‘hoax’
Twitter hoax kills very-much alive Morgan Freeman
December 17th, 2010 |
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Though Morgan Freeman is alive and well, fans of the actor were sent into a panic when a rumour rocketed across the Internet on Thursday that CNN had reported his death. The star died on Thursday — not in real life, but according to a Twitter hoax that duped countless users, reports the New York [...]
Morgan Freeman Dead? Morgan Freeman Death Hoax Rocks Twitter
December 17th, 2010 |
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It started with one random Tweet, now Twitter user @OriginalCJizzle has issued a public apology after he sent Tweeters into a tizzy with a comment that prompted thousands of members of the microblogging hub to believe that actor Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman was dead. The Glory star died Thursday — not in real life — [...]
Toyota ‘runaway a hoax’
March 16th, 2010 |
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The latest media speculation is that the guy with the out of control Prius he couldn’t stop – the story in the US that recently attracted so much attention and which Toyota said it would investigate – is some kind of hoaxster.
Toyota has pretty forcefully said its investigation’s findings are inconsistent with Mr Sikes’ account.
The below clip gives a flavour of which way the US media bandwagon is lurching today. Gotta love the anchor’s ‘Peter Falk moment’ digression near the end. He just had to explain who Peter Falk was. He just about managed to leave out the shabby raincoat and cigar.
US: Prius driver’s account “inconsistent” with Toyota’s study
Mom Confesses Balloon Boy Hoax
October 24th, 2009 |
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Mayumi Heene, the mother of the boy the world anxiously feared had been swept away by hs father’s runaway weather balloon, has confessed that the whole thing was a hoax created in hopes of raising the family’s public profile for a possible reality show deal.
The search warrant affidavit says Mayumi told investigators she and Richard [...]
Mother of boy feared carried away on balloon admits hoax
October 24th, 2009 |
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The mother of a six-year-old boy once feared missing inside a runaway helium balloon admitted the whole saga was a hoax, according to court documents released Friday. Mayumi Heene told sheriff’s deputies that she and her husband Richard “knew all along that Falcon was hiding in the
New York’s LaGuardia Airport evacuated after bomb scare
August 2nd, 2009 |
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A man carrying a hoax bomb triggered an evacuation of the main terminal at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Saturday, delaying thousands of travelers, authorities said. Multitudes were forced onto pathways and roadways around the complex, tying up incoming traffic for hours, officials said.
Hoax plan to pave over Central Park
July 24th, 2009 |
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Is the hoax campaign to concrete over NYC’s favourite green space and build an airport a satire on incompetent transport policy or another product viral? Watch this space
“Environmentalists rally in support of Manhattan airport”. That got your attention, didn’t it? And that was precisely the intention of the Manhattan Airport Foundation, a mysterious organisation that has outlaid its proposals to bulldoze Central Park in New York city and build an airport instead.
The foundation put out a press release earlier this week saying that the “Triborough Association for Fair Treatment” – a group it says lobbies to get legislation drafted to help protect migratory birds from aircraft strikes – was putting its full support behind the building of a new airport in the heart of Manhattan as it would reduce the kind of bird-related incidents that brought down US Airways Flight 1549 back in January causing it to bellyflop into the Hudson.
It’s all nonsense, of course. The whole thing is a hoax – one that’s been getting plenty of attention all week and managing to snare a few suckers along the way, too. The Manhattan Airport Foundation is pure fiction, as are its plans for an airport. Only a few nanoseconds of consideration lead you to realise the last place on earth that would ever be concreted over to make way for an airport would be Central Park.
But who is behind the hoax? And why have they spent a considerable amount of time and effort (and, presumably, money) creating such a professional-looking website? Chances are the site will soon morph into an advert for something or other, as has happened with other web hoaxes in the past. Or it could be some web-savvy comedians looking for some viral marketing?
No one yet, though, seems to have undercovered the real identity of those behind the Manhattan Airport Foundation, or their motive. The website’s domain name was registered back in April (even though the foundation claims to have been founded in 2006), but the identity of the domain’s owner has been withheld. The foundation’s Twitter page has only been live since 8 June, and its address is listed as being on the 58th floor, 233 Broadway. Yet the building only has 57 floors.
A press release dated April of this year says the foundation is to receive “significant financial backing over the next five years” from the “Waalwijk Charitable Trust”. In addition to this, the “Tokyo-based holding company Yamanote Ltd” will be making a “substantial gift”. Again, both these organisations are fictional – Waalwijk is the name of a town in the Netherlands and Yamanote is an affluent area in Tokyo.
The only person’s name mentioned anywhere on the site is a press officer called “Audrey Cortlandt”. Again, nothing of note shows up online for that name, although it does throw up some interesting anagrams – “Lady Dancer Tutor” being one of them. Not that this really helps us, though.
The plot thickens.
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