Hoax Museum Blog: Websites

Eggs As Caviar — Chrissy Caviar: A woman sells her eggs as caviar

Free Electricity — Power from the Phone Company: Plug your electrical appliances into the phonejack

Hoax Website: Home Despot — Home Despot: Shop, Destroy, Rule

We Want Your Soul! — Cute hoax website: WeWantYourSoul.com. Though it's more of a spoof than a hoax, I'd say, since I don't think anyone is actually going to believe they're going to get money out of this.

Bleeding Napoleon, The Art of Johann Dieter Wassmann — Check out this site dedicated to the art of Johann Dieter Wassmann, a university lecturer/sewerage engineer/artist who lived and worked in Germany from 1841-1898. It's incredibly elaborate, including his life history and samples of his work. And nowhere on the site does it suggest that the entire thing is a hoax, that Johann Dieter Wassmann never existed. You only find this out if you click on the link at the bottom of the page that says 'Next Show: Melbourne International Arts Festival, 12-25 October, 2003.' This takes you to the website of the Melbourne Festival itself where it admits that, "The Wassmann Foundation and artist Johann Dieter Wassmann are constructions created by American-born installation artist Jeff Wassmann and Australian curator/writer Kirsten Rann." Thanks to John Plutt for telling me about this site.

Black Market Babies — If you feel like adopting a baby, but can't for some reason, just give the folks at Black Market Babies $50,000 and they'll steal someone's baby and give it to you. They also offer black market pandas and black market tigers for sale. Unfortunately their online form for submitting orders is 'temporarily' out of order. (Link via Entensity.net, who linked to me. Warning: their site is not safe for work).

Win Toilet Paper — Enter the Win-Toilet-Paper sweepstakes, and the toilet-paper delivery man could soon be knocking on your door. I'm not sure if this is for real or not. I don't feel like supplying them with my email address to find out.

Update: Apparently it's real. Strange, but real.

Meat Shakes — Here's a new hoax website: meatshake.com. It claims to be the homepage of the MeatShake Corporation, operators of the Meat Shake chain of fast food restaurants. You guessed it, MeatShake offers meat lovers the chance to quench their carnivorous appetites with ham, beef, and turkey shakes. Let there be no doubt. This is meat put in a blender and sipped through a straw. Their corporate vision is simple, "Meat. Lots of Meat." (Thanks to Jeff Whealton for pointing the site out to me).

In reality, the MeatShake website is the creation of a band from Long Beach called Ugly Duckling. Their latest album, "Taste The Secret," tells the story of the MeatShake restaurant and it's battles against the rival chain Veggie Hut. The three members of the band claim to have met while working at a MeatShake restaurant.

Need more proof that MeatShake is a hoax? Well, if you examine the images on the site, you'll discover that whoever created them forgot to change the hidden preview file attached to the images, and this preview file shows what the images looked like before they were photoshopped. Thus, we discover that:


  

The Meat Shake sign (left) was originally a sign for Champion Burgers (right)

  

and the Meat Shake store with a 'Taste the Secret' banner (left), is actually an abandoned store with a 'For Lease' sign (right).

911 Survivor a Hoax? — The team of developers on this website claim to be creating a game called '911 Survivor' that allows you to simulate being inside the burning World Trade Center. Reacting to this, quite a few people have immediately speculated that it must be a hoax. But looking through the site, I suspect it isn't. Instead it seems to be some kind of art project designed to make people question the boundaries drawn between real-reality and media-reality.

Daria Movie Rumor Page — Here's the Unofficial Daria Movie Rumor Page. I'll let its creator, Barry Edelman, describe it in his own words:
I just finished your book and I loved it. I had to check out the site,
which is also good. Since you have a section on hoax sites, I had to submit
mine. My brother and I, annoyed by bad Hollywood movies based on television
shows (and bad Hollywood movies in general), for a few years maintained a site
called The Unofficial Daria Movie Rumor Page. The premise is that the MTV
cartoon series _Daria_ has been turned into a movie starring Jennifer Love
Hewitt in the title role. (The title role, being an intelligent, sarcastic
loner with a monotone voice, is probably the last character Hewitt would be
cast to play.) Although the page is explicitly labeled a parody (see the
bottom of the page) and some of the rumors reported are rather improbable, many
people have written in to express their outrage at the movie industry doing
such a thing, or, occasionally, to submit their own rumors. (Interestingly,
the actual writing of the page was disrupted by a hoaxer on a Yahoo! club, who
repeatedly submitted fraudulent news articles, which produced a few interesting
plot twists in the rumors.) Enjoy.

Absolution Online — Is the weight from your sins hanging heavy on your shoulders? Just visit Absolution Online, home of the Virtual Confessional, and your burden shall be lifted.

Hooty Corp. — Here's another hoax website: Hooty Corp. It's the creation of a visitor to my site (a young one, I suspect). Hooty Corp might be a little unpolished, but it's all the more endearing for being so. I particularly like the Hooty shop where you can buy products such as the Clothes Desmellerizer and a book titled How to Drive a Laidlaw Bus in 12 Simple Steps. You get a nice, subtle message if you click on the 'buy' button to purchase any of these products.

Metallica Lawsuit Hoax — Metallica sues the band Unfaith for unsanctioned usage of the chords E and F. I saw this story yesterday and thought it was strange. But then I figured, well it is Metallica, after all. So it's probably true. I should have known better. Today it's revealed to be a hoax concocted by Unfaith's singer/songwriter Erik Ashley (if you've never heard of Unfaith before, join the club. I hadn't either). Quite a good hoax. Believable enough to seem true at first, but in hindsight you kick yourself for having fallen for it. Plus, it makes fun of someone worth making fun of.

Bonsai Kittens — For some reason I've been getting a lot of email lately about Bonsai Kittens. I can't figure out why, since that hoax is almost three years old now. But I guess interest in some hoaxes just never dies (unlike those poor kittens in the jars).

Missing Stories at New York Times — Last week everyone was linking to this spoof about the missing Weapons of Mass Destruction. It even managed to become the first item displayed if you typed in 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' on Google (though Google has since changed that). In the same spirit, here's a spoof page about Jayson Blair and the New York Times.

Baby Ink Perpetrators Found — David Emery, of About.com's Urban Legends and Folklore page, found out that the Baby Ink tattoo parlor was an April Fool's day joke created by a couple of San Diego DJs. The DJs boast about the prank on their website (you need to scroll about halfway down to find the reference).

Tattoos for Kids — Here's the latest hoax website making the rounds: Baby Ink, a tattoo parlor for kids. The site claims that any kid over the age of six months is allowed to get a tattoo as long as their parent signs a consent form. But I don't believe that's right. That would be a bit like saying kids are allowed to smoke or drink alcohol as long as their parents consent to it. No, I think you have to be 18 or over to get a tattoo (or is it 16 and over?). The site lists a San Diego location that's quite near to where I live. I think I'll drive by and see what's actually there.

National Blonde Day — Oops. I forgot that yesterday was National Blonde Day, so designated by the Blonde Legal Defense Club. The day is designed to promote respect for the intelligence and accomplishments of blondes. In reality, it's a publicity stunt for the Legally Blonde movie.

Send Steve a Gift — SendSteveAGift.com is the latest website in which a guy brazenly asks people to send him money, just for the hell of it (his argument: give a buck to change Steve's luck). An anonymous visitor asked me if the site is for real. My response: Of course it is! I'm 100% certain that if you choose to surrender your cash to Steve, he'll take it. But if you're in a mood to part with some money, why not give it to me?

Powergen Italia — Over the past two weeks a lot of attention has been paid to a website whose name could be read in two ways: http://www.powergenitalia.com. Think about it. Powergen Italia, or... Anyway, I didn't link to it here at first, believing it was a legitimate company that didn't realize how its name could be misread. Turns out I was wrong. According to an article in The Register, the site is a spoof. The real company named Powergen denies having an Italian division named Powergen Italia. Someone must have created the site for a laugh. Perhaps a disgruntled Powergen employee. Some other website names that can be read in two ways are WhoRepresents.com (Whore Presents) and IPanywhere.com. (via Vowe.net)