There is nothing that can prevent you believing the stories of Russian fishermen, who, for the lack of fish, ate an alien, or the courageous deeds of Henryk Batuta, or a drunken wild boar raping teenagers or the hypothesis of an American physicist Alan Sokal relating quantum gravitation to feminism. If you have been exposed to one of the above stories and to top it off you believed it, it does not necessarily mean that you should doubt your intelligence or the ability to tell the truth apart from a lie. You simply have been nicely duped. Meaning you fell victim to mystification or hoaxing.
What is the meaning of all this? And why is it so easy to pull your leg?
There are at least a couple of answers. Maybe your mind is not the sharpest. But do not blame it on yourself or complain to your parents – most likely you just don’t keep up with the new media developments. A few years ago, if you heard about a close encounter of the third degree in a barn near Włoszczowa you probably would have thought twice about the authenticity and the likelihood of such an event taking place. But since the radio, television and most of all the Internet bombard your brain with piles of equally doubtful information, it is hard to discern which is spurious and which is pure information gold. The information noise, of which you are a conscious or subconscious receiver, contributes to a slow decay of your epistemological abilities. Because surely, as you correctly observe – flying fish (Exocoetidae) do exist, so why shouldn’t flounder-like aliens swimming in the dark waters of the Baikal (Extraterrestialis amphibia)?
This almost virgin (from the close to twenty years of Internet fever perspective) period of general access to Internet resources also marks an invasion of all sorts of fallacies and quasi-news likely unprecedented in the history of mankind. The development of communication techniques, contrary to expectations, did not contribute to an improvement in the quality of information, but only to its general accessibility. Modern technology enables perfect information distribution, however the negative angle is the ease with which disinformation can be cast into the mainstream. After all, the World is not all known, therefore a deviously planted seed of disinformation will sprout in even the intelligent head. Of course, a ripe fruit of boloney blossoms from it.
Why does someone want to pull wool over your eyes?
There are a few possibilities here as well. Alex Boese, the ‘curator’ of the Internet Museum of Hoaxes, divides the mystifications into two categories: overt hoaxes and covert hoaxes. The former simply tries to bamboozle you for the pure satisfaction of it. This type of hoax is designed as a sort of a practical joke, the author of which admits after a while that we are dealing with a fallacy. Purposely leading us on, at some point they wink at us as if to say: Gotcha! What losers! What is interesting is that potential anger of the ‘bamboozled’ does not turn against the creator of the prank but rather against ourselves for being naïve and gullible. The hoaxer [sic] then shines among the funniest, smartest and most intelligent people on our planet. It is easy to imagine that the few months of the Internet lifespan of Henryk Batuta provided a steady stream of good humor for the creators of that hoax for having fleeced all of the Polish Internet audience and, no doubt, many professional historians.
The second basic kind of mystification is a lot more mysterious. The creator of the hoax never reveals, that we were dealing with disinformation. This is where the proverbial stairs begin. It is difficult to suspect that the information given is a hoax. Even demystification does not do any good because ‘there must have been something to it’ and ‘such things don’t come out of nowhere’. Good examples of this are the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, originally fabricated by the tsarist Ochrana, which are still referenced as a viable source of information by the authors of anti-Semitic literature.
In trying to categorize hoaxes further into types we find terms such as: pranks, frauds, email spoofing, urban legends etc. Those expressions have not yet found a systematic definition and are used rather intuitively.
Let’s bamboozle this whole system!
A special type of hoax comprises a relatively new phenomenon called culture jamming. It is a mystification aimed at mass media. Culture jammers’ viewpoint is that the method of fighting the omnipresence of information corporations used to date, relying for example on panel discussions or no-nonsense presentation of one’s rights on the public forum, have become completely obsolete and are no longer effective. Arising from this belief is an idea of culture jamming or adbusting or the so-called communication guerrilla. Culture jammers utilize disinformation as a means to shock public opinion and draw its attention to official media manipulations, often including false information supplied by the advertising industry and its employers. A great example of this phenomenon are the activities of the “Yes Man” group, aimed at organizations supporting globalization (i.e. WTO). A few years ago, the members of the group have put up a fake web page dowethics.com, which was supposed to promote a ‘social responsibility’ program of the actually existing Dow Chemicals corporation, responsible for the chemical catastrophe in India. In a BBC interview, a “Yes Man” representative promised 12 million dollars relief for the victims from Dow Chemicals . This resulted in the immediate drop in the price of stocks, as a result of which Dow Chemicals lost 2 million dollars of its market worth.
An interesting example of culture jamming is the ”Nikeground” initiative of the Austrian group called 0100101110101101.org – it consisted of a media announcement that as part of a new advertising campaign Nike is buying and changing names of famous sites in all of the more important cities of the world. Vienna was supposedly picked as the first choice to open the campaign and so the historic Charles Square (Karlsplatz) was to be renamed Nike Square (Nikeplatz). The advertising campaign consisted of flyer distribution, creation of a nikeground.com website, as well as putting up a designer building/container, called “Nike-Infobox”, manned by three pretend Nike employees, right in the middle of Charles Square. A special phone line was established, where the Vienna citizens could share their impressions and suggestions regarding the project. It was then that the actual initiative was undertaken – it was announced through the media that the name Charles Square will be changed and that in the middle of the square a giant plastic statue, 36 meters high and 18 meters wide, representing the Nike logo, the so-called “Swoosh” will be put up. This finally tipped the scales of injustice for some of the Vienna citizens and the city administration denied the rumour in a hurry. What is most intriguing is that the most frequent reaction of the citizens of Vienna was not condemning the whole initiative but rather drawing attention to the possible financial gains that a campaign by the giant like Nike could bring to the city. “They already own everything so why not let them pay for it??? Maybe in exchange for renaming the square Nike will put up less adverts in the streets.” Nike had immediately distanced itself from the entire undertaking and sued its creators for illegal use of their logo. The trial ended in Nike’s defeat, because the court had decided that it was not a matter of Nike’s competitor’s actions but only a cultural project where the company logo had been used.
The 0100101110101101.org initiative was sponsored, among others, by art galleries and museums, therefore the intent was the realization of an art project. What is interesting is that the authors have distanced themselves from the anti-consumerist notion of the initiative and still insist, that they meant to do “nothing more” than put the whole city of Vienna in a state of confusion.
It would seem that the actions of the 0100101110101101.org group would make a perfect component of an actual advertising campaign for Nike corporation or, for that matter, an anti-campaign of a competitor. In the first case, the Nike company image would likely suffer. In the second, in spite of what may be expected, it could gain plenty. The “Nikeground” initiative, paradoxically, has contributed to the increased popularity of the Nike logo in Vienna and confirmed that Nike is in fact a “decent” company that respects the existing law and order. The Viennese have breathed a sigh of relief once the representatives of the company said that it was only some “art project” not connected to Nike.
The 0100101110101101.org group initiative must have been quite inspiring and educational for ”the other side of the barricade”. Hoaxing in advertising from the culture jammers’ viewpoint must look like crossing over to the dark side. However, the idea is positively prime and quite tempting – what if one were to “bamboozle” for advertising purposes and reasons purely commercial?
Hoax in the service of advertising
A great example of hoaxing in advertising is the Mary Woodbridge webpage (mary-woodbridge.co.uk). On it, a nice old lady from Greenfield in England reports on her preparations for her journey to the top of Mount Everest. She does not intend to climb alone, but in the fine company of her dog Daisy and she intends to go straight for the summit, without stopping at rest points or using oxygen masks (after all, they don’t make them for dogs anyway). This all sounds very improbable, but it does not “reek” of any advert or hoax straight away. It sounds as if the page was created, with the help of her grandson, by Mary herself – a slightly eccentric 85 year old grandmother, who is not without a sense of humour. It can be concluded, based on around 600 guest book entries, that a large number of site visitors have fallen for Mary’s story. After a few months, when the page reached significant publicity, a demystification took place and films showing Mary in training were accompanied by a Mammut Alpine-climbing equipment manufacturer’s logo in addition to a Mammut banner appearing on the webpage. Revealing that the website was only a part of a savvy advertising campaign did not affect its popularity (didn’t we say already that you like the boloney?) It surely has contributed to the popularity of the Mammut brand, whose clientele was probably expanded by a multitude of “Sunday Alpine climbers”.
The advantage of the ”hoax advertising campaigns” is their relatively low price tag compared with the wide reach they can achieve. Appropriately setup hoax can become very popular in a short period of time – we are in fact dealing with viral marketing. As an example, not necessarily from the advertising industry, let’s bring up a certain fictitious article from the Internet edition of the Gazeta Wyborcza paper entitled “Teenager raped by a drunk boar”. The nienaautyzm.com webpage, where the article was published, was visited by 30 000 people over 2 days (with the average page views from before the article publication pegged at around 60 per day). After two days of the “siege” the transfer limit was reached and the author was forced to remove the article for the webpage to continue to function. Simultaneously, copies of the article appeared on around 2000 Internet pages and forums. Lively discussions were conducted on whether it was an actual Gazeta Wyborcza article or a simple hoax.
Hoax is a new phenomenon in advertising. It could be ventured that the ”traditional” methods of product advertising have become passé and do not bring success stories like they used to in the age before the Internet. It would seem, that the “advertising hoax” has a bright future in the new media, although supposedly we do not like to be fooled. “A horse is a horse” – the advertising industry is teasing us. And it’s true – when a camouflaged hoax (advertising one as well) is served to us in a subtle manner, we have nothing against gobbling up this information boloney with gusto. We even enjoy it quite a bit.
Krzysztof Nienałtowski
http://nienautyzm.com
Links:
http://museumofhoaxes.com/
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henryk_Batuta
http://www.kp.ru/daily/23851/63075/
http://nienautyzm.com/pokaz.php/610-galeria-29.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair
http://dowethics.com/
http://www.theyesmen.org/
http://0100101110101101.org/
http://www.nikeground.com/
http://www.mary-woodbridge.co.uk/
