Hoax Museum Blog: Sex/Romance

JDate Personal Ads — Banner ads for JDate, the Israeli dating service, promise to match Jewish bachelors up with attractive Jewish women. For instance, one ad shows blonde-haired, 22-year-old Hila from Tel Aviv who's "looking for a single Jewish guy." Another shows 26-year-old Sharon who's looking for a Jewish husband. But as it turns out, there is no Hila from Tel Aviv. The woman in the picture is actually Hungarian porn star Kari Gold. And Sharon? She's really Devon Sweet, a bisexual model from the United States. Neither Kari Gold nor Devon Sweet are affiliated in any way with JDate (so no luck meeting them that way). Their pictures were just randomly collected on the internet. I guess this is another shocking reminder that advertisers sometimes bend (or completely disregard) the truth.

The It-Was-My-Twin-Sister Excuse — Aylar's career as a finalist for Miss Norway was about to come to a crashing end when her secret past in the adult film industry was revealed. The rules of the Miss Norway competition clearly forbid contestants from having posed nude for money. But luckily Aylar had an explanation ready at hand. That woman doing all those things in those movies wasn't her, even though it looked exactly like her. It was her twin sister. (Wasn't there an episode of Friends where this happened to Phoebe?). Unfortunately for Aylar, a quick investigation revealed that she had no twin sister. She's now the ex- an ex-finalist for Miss Norway.

Paper Napkin Rejection Service — Almost two years ago I posted an entry about the Rejection Hotline, which is a service that provides you with a phony number to give to losers in clubs (or elsewhere) who are trying to get your phone number. When they call it up they hear a message telling them that they've been rejected. A new internet version of the Rejection Hotline is called Paper Napkin. It provides you with a phony email address to give to people. When they write to it, they automatically get this response: "This email is a rejection notice directed toward yourself from someone who gave you this bunk email address. That lovely person wants to communicate a message to you. In short, they are not interested."

Where to Stay in Athens — The Olympic Games are about to start and a lot of people are probably thinking that it would be fun to go to Athens to check them out. But where to stay? Well, if you're "a girl, aged between 18 and 32, reasonably good looking and open-minded, you can stay in Athens in a beautiful house, free of charge." (Some language might make it NSFW). Oh yeah. There are just a few rules: "1. You cannot stay for more than 4 days. 2. You cannot bring any males with you. 3. You've got to be the landlord's lover for a night." Sure, this could be real. People do far more outrageous things. But what makes me think it's all a hoax is that a number of links on the site deceptively lead to commercial porn sites (though the links on the frontpage seem to be okay). In other words, it's a kind of bait-and-switch scam. The url 'EZ-B8' should have given it away. I guess it's working because people like me link to it anyway.

Devirginize Marc — This falls under the category of 'could easily be true, but seriously, you've got to be kidding.' It's DeVirginizeMarc.com. Marc (if that's his real name) is 26 years old and a virgin. Or, as he puts it, "My name is Marc, and I'm a virgin... and I'm okay with it." But he's obviously not that okay with it, because he's soliciting applications from the public to help him change his situation. Maybe it's just me, but Marc looks like he's closer to his late 30s than his mid 20s. Could he be lying about his age? I immediately checked to see who the website was registered to, but it's registered anonymously through Domains by Proxy. I guess if it were my website, I'd try to stay anonymous too.

Escape-a-Date — The Arizona Daily Star reports that Cingular Wireless is preparing to debut an Escape-a-Date feature on its phones. It will allow you to prearrange a phone call to interrupt you during a date, providing you with a convenient out, should it be necessary. Excuse messages offered up will include "my friend is having some trouble with superglue and needs some help" and "my friend was looking in his fridge and found some pudding that's shaped like Elvis." That second thing about Elvis really happened to me, except it wasn't pudding. It was a potato chip. (via BoingBoing)

Boyfriend Arm Pillow — For those women who don't want to sleep with a real man, but like to have an arm wrapped around them at night, Japanese manufacturer Kameo has come out with the Boyfriend Arm Pillow. A Kameo spokesman says that, "It has been so successful we have had to draw up a waiting list. Women of all ages have been queueing round the block to take one home." Kameo also plans to introduce a Girlfriend Arm Pillow later. But this is my question: If you're married would it be considered cheating to sleep with a boyfriend/girlfriend arm pillow?

Nude Photos Required to Enter Canada — The Toronto Sun reports that exotic dancers applying for a visa to enter Canada are now expected to submit photos of themselves performing in the nude... to prove that they really are exotic dancers. Immigration lawyer Mendel Green claims that the rules are quite specific: "They can't be partially nude. If they don't have pictures in the nude, they are not going to wiggle their bottoms in Canada." This sounds very weird. Could the Toronto Sun be the victim of a joke? Are they pulling our leg? Or have Canadian immigration officials just figured out a great way to get their hands on lots of free pictures of naked women? I'm not sure, but given how many other bizarre rules and regulations government bureaucrats manage to come up with, I'm guessing the story is probably true.

Sperm Race TV — Reality TV shows just keep getting weirder and weirder. The latest one being developed in Britain (unless it's all a hoax, like Lapdance Island or Quarantine) is Sperm Race TV, in which a group of guys get to compete for the prize of fathering a child. Two finalists are chosen, one chosen by the mother on the basis of romantic attraction, the other chosen by the show's producers on the basis of 'genetic compatibility' with the mother. The two guys will then compete in a sperm race, filmed with special fiber-optic cameras, to see whose sperm can inseminate the mother's egg first. To me this sounds hoaxy on a number of different levels. First of all, what do they mean by 'genetic compatibility'? I can understand you might want to screen to make sure two partners aren't harboring deadly recessive genes, but beyond that what exactly makes two people genetically compatible? Second, how exactly will they stage this 'sperm race'? I assume they'd have to introduce the two sperm samples at the exact same time into the woman to make it a fair race, but then how will they know which sperm belongs to which father? And finally, are they seriously contemplating getting the woman pregnant? Or will they abort the child? Either way, they're going to outrage a lot of people.

Misleading URLs — Jim Terr submitted this hoax website of his own creation: willingchicks.com. It offers "world-class companionship — If you can afford it!" It belongs in the genre of sites with misleading URLs, in the same vein as nice-tits.org and supermodelswithseethroughtops.com (all very safe for work). Misleading URLs are similar to Unfortunate URLs, the difference being that the former are intentional whereas the latter aren't.

The Plucking Rainbow Orgy — Viewers of British tv might remember Rainbow, a children's show starring the puppet characters Bungle, Zippy, and George, and hosted by Geoffrey Hayes. Recently a movie has been circulating around the web (you can also see it here) purporting to show an episode of Rainbow that's heavily, heavily laced with sexual innuendo. Way too much innuendo to possibly be accidental. It's been dubbed the 'Rainbow Plucking Orgy' tape. It's very funny, but is it real? Was it ever really broadcast? According to the Planet Gromit site, the tape is real, but it never aired. It was created as a joke and was not meant to see the light of day. I have no idea how it's surfaced now.

Viagraholics Anonymous — Sex addiction can be real enough, but Viagraholics Anonymous, a site dedicated to helping men who are addicted to Viagra, seems a bit tongue-in-cheek. For instance, take this testimony from Ben, a recovering Viagraholic: "I turned to the Internet and ordered more Viagra online, from two or three sites at a time, to maintain my supply. The days that followed are just a blur. Mornings I'd wake up on the couch, my pants around my ankles with another damned erection, then take a cold shower and stagger into work. I'd be walking around with an obvious erection in my pants, unaware that people were laughing at me behind my back." Ben's problem sounds a little like something out of a Clive Barker story. (via J-Walk)

Gay Fuel Energy Drink — Gay Fuel is the bright pink energy drink that will get you 'Fired Up'. When I first saw this site I figured it had to be a spoof. After all, a special drink just for gays? It seems like a natural lead-in to all kinds of jokes (for instance, what happens if you drink it straight?). But after some quick research I'm quite sure that Gay Fuel is very real. It's available for purchase from a number of online vendors ($12.95 a six-pack!), and a lot of other sites discuss it. Andy Towle, the artist who designed the can for it, says that it tastes like "something between a Cosmo and a Red Bull." The whole concept of Gay Fuel seems a bit like niche marketing run amok to me, though I guess there are all kinds of products marketed exclusively towards the fundamentalist Christian community, so why not have a drink marketed exclusively towards the gay community? But it seems like not everyone in the gay community is embracing it with open arms. A gay rights activist in Portland has declared that "We are not interested in "brand loyalty" to those "brave" corporations who first bid to divest us of our money. We won't drink a Bud Light, Absolut or Gay Fuel beverage to support the commercial assimilation of our community."

Clueless Childless Couple Follow-Up — Back in May I posted an entry about a German couple who went to a fertility clinic to find out why they couldn't produce a child. The reason: they hadn't realized that you first have to have sex in order to get pregnant. Supposedly they both came from very religious backgrounds and had never been taught about the birds and the bees. The clinic was said to be planning to conduct a survey to find out if there were other similarly clueless couples out there. This story was widely reported in the news, even though it seemed a little far-fetched, to say the least. At the time I noted that a case kind of like this had been reported in a medical journal, but that the reason the couple didn't have sex was not because they didn't realize what they were supposed to do, but because the husband suffered from erectile dysfunction. I emailed the German clinic where the clueless couple was said to have been treated and finally received a reply confirming that the case of the clueless couple reported in the English-language media did derive from the case of the couple who didn't have sex for more mechanical reasons. Here's the email I received from the doctor:



Dear Alex Boese,

As one of the authors of the paper you asked for Prof Johannisson I would like to inform you, that in fact we treated such a couple. The problem wasn't that the couple had tried to get pregnant without having sexual intercourse - the reason for not having sexual intercourse was psychogenic erectile dysfunction in the male. They were aware of their problem and not treated with assisted reproductive techiques. We send them to a psychologist for counselling. The reason to publish this case report was to make doctors sensible for those problems. All other things, described in this paper on (1) the religious background and (2) a planned survey etc are not true and definitively not related to this case! May be, others have had a similiar case published which I am not aware of. Hope, this information helps you to put some light on the situation.

Yours,

Priv. Doz. Dr. med. M. Ludwig

ENDOKRINOLOGIKUM Hamburg

Zentrum für Hormon- und Stoffwechselerkrankungen,

gynäkologische Endokrinologie und Reproduktionsmedizin



So that settles that. There was a very small grain of truth to the story, but in its passage from a medical journal article to the Daily Mirror and beyond, the story was improved quite a bit.

To Hermione on her 18th Birthday — Donald Nyffington, 37-year-old UNIX programmer, is in love. He's in love with Hermione Granger... or rather with Emma Watson who plays Hermione in the Harry Potter movies. And Emma, unfortunately for Donald, is only 14. So he's started the 'Official Countdown Website to Hermione Granger's 18th Birthday.' The site is convincing enough that you really might start to believe that Donald and his unrequited passion for Hermione are for real. But they're not. The picture on Donald's 'About Me' page gives it away. It comes from an old Onion article titled 'Creepy Middle-Aged Weirdos Swept Up In Harry Potter Craze.' (via Scattered Pieces)

The Old Fake-Wife Scam — How to get divorced from your wife behind her back: use a fake wife. A man and his wife showed up in divorce court, where they proceeded to file all the paperwork to end their marriage. Only it later turned out that the woman with him at the court wasn't really his wife. She was a phony. His real wife learned about the divorce when she received all the paperwork in the mail. You've got to wonder how this guy ever thought he was going to get away with this. Did he think his real wife would never notice and never complain?

Hoax Warning — Here's the latest hoax warning that's going around via email. Actually, it may be quite old, but I've only come across it recently. So here it is:

I hate those hoax warnings, but this one is important! Send this
warning to everyone on your e-mail list.
If someone comes to your front door saying they are conducting a survey
and asks you to take your clothes off, do not do it.!!! This is a scam;
they only want to see you naked. I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so
stupid and cheap now.....

Hunting for Bambi Officially a Hoax — It's official. Michael Burdick, the guy behind that whole 'Hunting for Bambi' thing that turned into a media circus about a year ago (you remember, the Las Vegas company that claimed to be hosting paintball games in which you could hunt naked women), has finally admitted that the whole thing was a hoax. Not that anyone was in much doubt of that. As part of a plea bargain deal "Burdick acknowledged that claiming the paintball hunts were real was part of an advertising strategy for the videos and apologized for 'any embarrassment to the city of Las Vegas caused by such false or misleading promotional activity.'" I'm sure we'll all be able to sleep easier now that this has finally been laid to rest.

Clueless Childless Couple — Last week the British Daily Mirror printed a story about a particularly clueless German couple. As the article put it:
"Fertility doctors were baffled when a perfectly-healthy couple claimed they couldn't have children - until they confessed they had never made love. The husband, 36, and his 32-year-old wife thought that all they had to do to make a baby was to lie next to each other and let nature take its course."
This story got picked up by wire services, and soon was being linked to all over the internet. But was there actually any truth to the story?
The snopes website, skeptical of the story, pointed out that 'tales of sexually naive adults who don't understand what sex is' are a common subject for urban legends. But other internet sleuths dug a little deeper and discovered that the Daily Mirror's story actually derived from a real case. Comments left at Der Schockwellenreiter website (in German) pointed to this April 2003 medical article describing a couple who sought fertility treatment at the Lubeck clinic, only to later confess that after eight years of marriage they had never actually had sex. The reason: the husband suffered from erectile dysfunction.
Another article from the Medical Tribune describes this same case in more detail (the article is in German, so I used BabelFish to produce a rough translation of it). So the Daily Mirror's story improves on the actual case quite a bit. A whole lot, in fact. But it's not complete fiction. The author of the article was Allan Hall, a reporter based in Germany who regularly sells stories to the British tabloids (back in the 1990s he was the London Sun's New York correspondent). He seems to enjoy taking weird stories and juicing them up to make them even weirder. Headlines from some of his other stories include, "Dog Called Adolf Gave Nazi Salute to Children," "My Twins Had Different Dads," and "Eaten By His Pet Spiders" (this final article was apparently also more fiction than fact). (I got many of these links via Heiko Hebig)

Ex-Wife’s Knickers — Supposedly to get even with his soon-to-be-ex wife, who's been cheating on him, a man is selling her knickers on eBay. Except it's not eBay. Just a mock-up of it. Now if the (fake) seller had taken pictures of himself wearing her underwear (taking a page from Wedding Dress Guy), it might have been funnier. (via Adrants)