Gallery of
Hoax Websites: K-Z
These aren't sites about hoaxes. These are sites that are, themselves, hoaxes.
The lifespan of hoax websites tends to be rather brief. So don't be surprised if some of the links no longer work. I do my best to check them once in a while, and if they're dead I'll move them to the Hoax Website Graveyard. But if you notice that a link is dead, just let me know. All these links worked as of September 20, 2003.
NOTE: I stopped adding to this list in late 2003 when I began keeping a regular weblog. Hoax websites that I've found since then can be found by looking at the 'hoax websites' category for the weblog. There's a lot of them there (more than there are on this list).
Kresky TV
Do you remember Kresky, that icon of the '70s? No one can blame you if you don't. This website is a virtual shrine to the memory of a great tv show that never was.
Lake Michigan Whale Watching One of the best guarded secrets of the Great Lakes.
Landover Baptist Church
A site pretending to be the homepage of an evangelical church, but which is, in fact, a send-up of such churches.
Lincoln Park Trixie Society
Lincoln Park is a trendy Chicago neighborhood. This society caters to the special needs and aspirations of its upwardly-mobile residents known as Trixies.
McWhortle Enterprises, Inc.
On January 30, 2002 the SEC announced that it would be creating hundreds of hoax websites designed to look like the homepages of legitimate businesses. The idea was to use these websites as a way to inform investors about the potential for online investing fraud. McWhortle Enterprises, a company supposedly promoting its new 'bio-hazard detector,' was the first of these SEC hoaxes.
Mail-Order Husbands The first mail-order-spouse firm to market eligible bachelors.
MalePregnancy.com
This site presents the case of Mr. Lee Mingwei, supposedly the first man to become pregnant. The author of the site is really a man named Virgil Wong who created it as an art project.
Meatshake It's name says it all. Sample an appetizing ham, turkey, or beef shake.
Miskatonic University The creation of H.P. Lovecraft becomes a reality on the internet.
Moscow Subway Metrocam It's all in Russian, but the picture you see is from a webcam located inside an underground tunnel on the Moscow subway. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you'll see the light of an approaching train. And yes, it is a hoax. Its creator told me so.
Ninja Burger
The world's predominant undergound ninja-run fast food delivery service.
NonprofitableTech.com Their business model is to suck up venture capital money.
Origami Boulder The Japanese art of folding paper used to make round rocks.
The Ova Prima Foundation
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? This organization has produced scientific evidence to suggest that it was the egg which came first.
The Penguin Conspiracy Revealing the shocking truth... that penguins are plotting to take over the world.
PetsOrFood.com
Pets or Food can supply you with animals that can be used, as the name implies, as pets or as meat. They offer a full range of species, including bald eagles, snakes, koala, and hamsters. But don't worry. The site IS a hoax, in the same vein as Manbeef.com.
Power from the Phone Company Plug your electrical appliances into the phonejack.
RealAroma.com
This site brings the world of smell to your computer. Actually, I heard there really was technology that could do something like this.
Real Hamster Hot hamster sex. Maybe not safe for work.
Rectaltronics
Not for the easily offended. This site offers "the world's most
technologically advanced computerized butt-plugs" for sale. If you think the site might be real, try ordering one of their products (don't bother to fill in any personal info) and see what happens.
Sellafield Zoo
The website of the Sellafield Zoo, located near the Sellafield Nuclear Power Plant. It boasts that it's the zoo "where the wildlife has a half-life." Predictably, the animals in the zoo tend to display interesting mutations. A creation of John Hopkin, creator of 'Britain for Americans,' 'British Stick Insect Foundation,' and 'CarpSoft.'
The Spud Server
A website powered by the electricity generated from a potato. This link will take you to a site that explains the hoax. If you follow enough links you might actually arrive at a site powered by a potato.
Tadoos
Need some extra cash? Allow a corporation to use your body as advertising space. Get tattooed with an attractive corporate logo. This site tells you how. The premise of this site is actually a reprise of an April Fool's Day joke pulled off by National Public Radio in 1994.
TechnicalVirgin.com
In the spirit of President Clinton's legalistic definition of sex, this site offers teens a novel solution to avoiding pregnancy. If you found the Starr Report shockingly explicit, you'll find the solution proposed here even more shocking, so be warned. It's not for the puritanical, but somewhere on the site they do explain that it's all intended as a joke.
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
A project to reintroduce blank pages back to the web, "to offer internet wanderers a place of quietness and simplicity on the overcrowded World Wide Web — a blank page for relaxing the restless mind."
Time Travel Mutual Fund Your ticket to the future.
VillainSupply.com
Where do supervillains, mad scientists, warlords, dictators, and despots find all their evil stuff? They may have had trouble in the past, but now VillainSupply.com makes it easy for them. Available evil henchmen Hitler Clone, and Robotic Ayn Rand. Satisfied customers include Zombie Shakespeare and Enron's Ken Lay.
What is Victoria's Secret In a nutshell, it's bulimia. Unfortunately this site had to place 'parody' labels all over itself due to complaints from the real Victoria's Secret.
What's Wrong With This Picture
The link to this url typically gets sent via e-mail. It always includes a note explaining that the image of a ghost can be seen in the photo. To see the ghost you need to "concentrate around the table. Best not to focus
too much on one spot. Look around the table and toward the window... For an added touch turn up the volume, it's faint, but the low murmur you hear was what got the photographer's attention first." To see the 'ghost' you need to have shockwave installed on your computer. You also need to wait about thirty seconds.
Whitehouse.net
The URL might lead you to think it's the website of the real White House, but it's not.
WingMakers.com
An incredibly elaborate site that was launched back in November 1998. It claims to display artifacts that were found in underground caves beneath the New Mexico deset by the Advanced Contact Intelligence Organization (ACIO), a secret branch of the U.S. Government's National Security Agency. These artifacts were apparently left there by an alien race known as the WingMakers. Also included is a description of Blank Slate Technology, which can send government agents back into the past to control the course of human history. Strange stuff.
Yoga KittyInstructional yoga videos for you and your cat