|
|
Hunting For Bambi Posts from my weblog about the Hunting for Bambi hoax, presented in chronological order. 7/16/03: Hunting for Bambi Is 'Hunting for Bambi' a hoax? In case you somehow missed it (hiding under a rock, or something), Hunting for Bambi is supposedly a company that for $10,000 will let guys hunt naked women with a paintball gun in the desert outside of Las Vegas. The company got some local TV coverage, and then the larger news outlets picked up on the story, initiating a media frenzy. But based on the emails I've been getting, a lot of people are suspicious about the company's claims. After all, exactly how does one sign up to go on one of these Bambi-hunting expeditions? That doesn't seem to be clear since the company isn't responding to most inquiries. What I would guess is that there are no Bambi-hunting trips. That would involve just too many legal problems. But the company is offering a video for sale, and members of the public can definitely buy that. I suspect that the company is just pretending to offer the 'hunts' as a way to generate a lot of publicity and sell the video (and the other merchandise they're offering). The whole scheme is reminiscent of something like Ron's Angels, which got a lot of publicity back in 1999 because it claimed to be selling the eggs of supermodels to infertile couples. That all turned out to be a hoax to promote a pornographic web site. I could be wrong about Hunting for Bambi, but I'll wait for them to provide more evidence of the truth of their claims before I change my mind. — 7/17/03: More about Hunting for Bambi Suspicions that Hunting for Bambi is a hoax seem to be growing. If the company is for real then it should be easy enough for them to prove it. Show that you're signing people up for new 'hunts.' Produce the accounting records to prove that you've taken people's money for hunts in the past. But of course they won't do that. These hoaxes always work the same way. Stall and delay for as long as possible while you milk the controversy for all the publicity you can get. KLAS-TV, the Las Vegas station that originally aired the story, discovered that the company behind Hunting for Bambi, only has a business license that allows it to sell videos, not to operate a sexually-oriented business nor to run paintball games. So if they are actually doing this, they're doing it without the proper licenses. — 7/22/03: Hunting for Bambi Update It's looking more and more like Hunting for Bambi is a hoax. George Evanthes, the man who claimed to have paid to go on a Bambi hunt, is now being denounced as a shill by his friends. And the Hunting for Bambi company is claiming that it can no longer hold any Bambi Hunts because all the potential customers have been scared away by negative publicity. Seems like a convenient excuse. — 7/26/03: Hunting for Bambi (hopefully final update) So I think it's finally official that Hunting for Bambi is a hoax, a publicity stunt done to sell videos in which actors pretend to go on Bambi hunts. Las Vegas officials investigated the company and couldn't find evidence that any hunts had ever been conducted. Not to mention the fact that the company didn't have a license to conduct paintball games, even ones not involving naked women. Isn't it wonderful that public attention gets focused on things like this rather than, oh, poverty, hunger, education, etc.? — 7/30/03: Hunting for Bambi It looks like it's now 100% official that Hunting for Bambi was a hoax. — |