Hoax Museum Blog: Sex/Romance

Dear Abby meets the Simpsons — Dear Abby answered a letter from a woman who described the following situation. Her brutish, insensitive husband gave her a bowling ball for her birthday fitted to his own hand size. She retaliated by taking up bowling as a hobby, but soon met a man at the bowling alley and fell in love with him. So what should she do? Dear Abby advised trying to save the marriage, but an alert newspaper editor realized that the letter actually described an episode of the Simpson's in which this exact situation happened to Marge. The letter was pulled before it had a chance to appear in papers

I Can Still Tell Your Wife, Bill — The advertising agency Yarnbird is trying to make a name for itself as a creator of viral content. It invents odd sites that appear to be the creations of weird, eccentric people. The hope is that the popularity of the sites will provide publicity for Yarnbird. One of its previous sites, that I've linked to before, was My Son Peter. Another site that people have been linking to recently is I can still tell your wife, Bill. It appears to be created by a woman who's mad at Bill, a married guy she had an affair with. But like I said, it's really created by Yarnbird. I guess their strategy works because people like me link to them.

Imaginary Girlfriends — A few weeks ago I noted the growing popularity of buying and selling imaginary relationships on eBay. Now the concept has migrated off of eBay and became the basis for a new company: ImaginaryGirlfriends.com. As the site explains:

Okay, but what about the imaginary boyfriends?

The Love Lump — When you're in the mood for something erotic, do you fantasize about "artificially-engineered transgenic tissue sculpture." If so, then the LoveLump, created by EroTech Industries (not safe for work), is just the thing for you. The LoveLump, in concept, is like a blow-up sex doll, except that it's designed from real, living tissue. Oh, and it also doesn't look anything like a sex doll. While it bears all the appropriate sex organs, it's lacking a head or limbs. It's just a lump. To keep your LoveLump alive, you have to inject it with nutrients on a regular basis. So is the LoveLump real? No. EroTech Industries is a mock biotech company created by Vancouver-based artist Christopher Moses. It won a Memefest award last year.

Imaginary eBay Girlfriends — Buying imaginary girlfriends (and, less frequently, boyfriends) is the latest fad on eBay. What happens is that if you're the winning bidder, the person you bid for will pretend to be going out with you for a set period of time, such as a month. This imaginary relationship will be limited to emails and letters... you won't ever meet your eBay lover in person. But by showing off the communications from your new girlfriend, you might be able to convince your friends that you aren't quite the antisocial loser they thought you were. That is, until they find out that you paid for an imaginary friend, at which point they'll think you're an even bigger loser than they thought before.

Superbowl Overexposure — Half of America saw Justin Timberlake 'accidentally' expose part of Janet Jackson's breast on live tv during the Superbowl halftime show. But now a great controversy is sweeping over the internet. Was the exposure really an accident? Or was it planned and staged? Matt Drudge is reporting that it was planned and even approved by high-level CBS officials beforehand. Plus, the accidental exposure fit in remarkably well with the lyrics of the song, which made references to getting naked before the end of the song. Finally, how exactly does one 'accidentally' rip away part of a costume? I mean, it wasn't like something got snagged. He quite purposefully reached over and grabbed her costume.

Hot Noodz — Hold onto your hats for this one. Hot Noodz offers you uncensored noodle porn. That's right. Noodles strut their stuff in all kinds of provocative poses. Is it safe for work? That depends entirely on if your boss would be offended by the sight of naked noodles. (Thanks again to Phil Carmody for the link. Phil reports that he was the 'purveyor of background tiles' for this site).
WARNING: pop-up ads. (I didn't notice these until someone pointed them out to me... my browser automatically blocks pop-up ads).

Butt-Skirts Become Real — You might remember the infamous 'Japanese Butt-Skirt Hoax,' in which pictures circulated around the internet showing Japanese women wearing skirts that supposedly had buttocks airbrushed onto them. The buttocks in those pictures were created via photoshop (i.e. they were painted on the photos, not the skirts), but a fashion designer has now been inspired to create real 'butt skirts.' Check them out at Alba D'Urbano Couture. (Warning: contains fake nudity. The women are wearing clothes, but the clothes themselves have pictures of naked bodies on them).

Philanderers International — Here's another site that makes you wonder if it's real or fake: Philanderers.com. It's a service to help people who are married have extramarital affairs. My first thought was that it was a joke. But upon looking around it for a while, it appears legitimate. I wonder if any single people use this who want to have an affair with someone who's married? And here's an evil thought: if you ever try to cancel your membership, they could threaten to tell your spouse.

Vixen Love — If you're ever instant messaging on AOL and strike up a conversation with a 19-year-old female from California named Vixen Love, watch out. You're not really talking to a teenage girl. Vixen Love is actually a computer program. Quite a few people apparently have failed to realize this.

He casts a long shadow — This photo of Dick Gephardt's shadow cast across an American flag was snapped today (Dec. 1) at a campaign rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It appeared on Yahoo News and is quickly spreading across the internet. Despite the suggestive nature of part of the shadow, one has to assume that it hasn't been photoshopped. It's one of those things that seems like a hoax, but actually isn't, much like the picture of the Jamie Oliver calendar that was circulating around recently. Thanks to Kentaro Mori for giving me a heads up about this.

The Naked Chef — Here's a picture of the 2004 calendar of Jamie Oliver (aka The Naked Chef). Note the suggestively placed piece of bread. This image originally appeared on the website of Boots, which is a British pharmacy. And it quickly attracted attention, at which point Boots cropped the image in order to remove the offending piece of bread. I can't find another picture of the calendar anywhere online to compare this picture to, but I'm assuming that the piece of bread must have been photoshopped in. Probably by a mischievous Boots employee.

Update 2 (11/17/03): David Emery reports that he was able to find the real version of the Jamie Oliver 2004 calendar, and it looks nothing like the fake version that appeared on the Boots website. Oh, and what I thought was a piece of bread was actually a brown paper bag that had been photoshopped.
Update 3 (11/18/03): David Emery has done some great sleuthing and discovered that the Jamie Oliver calendar being sold by Boots is absolutely real and unaltered. Boots sent him a full-size image of the calendar cover (which he was kind enough to forward along to me). It shows Jamie taking oranges out of a paper bag and peeling them. Full-size the image looks quite innocent, but shrunk down to thumbnail size, the position and shape of the paper bag becomes rather suggestive. Personally I think that whoever created that calendar must have been aware of the two ways of viewing that paper bag when they chose that image. It's an old advertising strategy: put a bit of subliminal (or not so subliminal) sexual imagery in an ad and watch the product fly off the shelf.

Cheating Scum — Cheating Scum was a hoax website purporting to offer a forum in which people could expose 'cheating scum' boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands, etc. It only existed for a little while, but Kirun sends word that a mirrored version of it is still online.

Real Sheep — Here's an odd site, sent along to me by Chris, whom I met while I was attending the Hoaxes conference in New Mexico. It's the Real Sheep site, selling the world's finest elastic, life-size love mutton (the site is safe for work). As Chris points out, Real Sheep appears to be a parody of RealDoll.com (not safe for work) which sells the world's finest love dolls.

NCSU Fellatio-Breast Cancer Study — While I was away in England during October I missed a bunch of news. One story that I missed was the remarkable spread of a spoof CNN webpage (see PDF file) claiming that "Fellatio may significantly reduce the risk of breast cancer in women." Reading through it now, I don't see how anyone could not have recognized it as a joke. After all, how many doctors are named "Dr. Inserta Shafteer"? But apparently many people were fooled. CNN was annoyed enough that they threatened the creator of the hoax site, a North Carolina State University student named Brandon Williamson, with legal action. Brandon quickly removed all CNN references from the page. The spoof page itself was hosted on NCSU's server (which was another reason people should have immediately realized it was a hoax). But apparently people are still being taken in by it. Just a few days ago Mary Ann Liebert, publisher of the Journal of Women's Health, issued a press release demanding that "the network must investigate thoroughly its decision-making process that allowed a story that is so damaging and degrading to be put up on its website." Apparently she doesn't realize that the spoof page never appeared on CNN's website.

Student Prank Goes Bad — I'm making a mental note to myself: the next time I'm at a party in China, I won't strap fake genitals to myself, dance obscenely, and throw scraps of papers pulled from my underwear at the audience. Three Japanese students attending school in China made the mistake of doing this and have sparked massive anti-Japanese demonstrations throughout the country.

Marry Your Pet — Do you really, really love your pet? Then why not marry him or her? Go to MarryYourPet.com, and you can make it happen. Of course, the marriage isn't recognized by a court of law, which makes it somewhat of a hoax, but they really will sell you a marriage certificate, an 'I married my pet' T-shirt, or a wall plaque. They're all incredibly overpriced. If they offered the certificate for $5 instead of $20, they probably would do more business. They're trying to sell the wall plaque for $200. Ouch! Who in their right mind would shell out that much for a gag gift?

No Marriage — A visitor (Carly) has asked me whether I think nomarriage.com is a hoax site. After checking it out, I don't think it is. The guy may be slightly tongue-in-cheek, and he's definitely designed his site to generate maximum controversy, but I'm sure that if you pay him $9.95 (via paypal) you really will get his NoMarriage book, and it'll basically be a misogynistic rant against American women. I could see people thinking it would be an amusing gag gift for someone about to get married, but personally I wouldn't want to give any money to the guy.

Single Black Female Looking for Love — An email has been making the rounds that appears to be a personal ad from a 'single black female' who's looking for love. Daisy, as the mystery female calls herself, promises that she loves to play and, if she finds the right man, will be willing to wait at home for him 'wearing only what nature gave me.' Thousands of men have called up the number listed in the email, only to find themselves connected to the Atlanta Humane Society. Daisy is, of course, a black Labrador. Here's the text of the email:
SINGLE BLACK FEMALE seeks male companionship, ethnicity unimportant. I'm a very good-looking girl who LOVES to play. I love long walks in the woods, riding in your pickup truck, hunting, camping and fishing trips, cozy winter nights lying by the fire. Candlelight dinners will have me eating out of your hand. Rub me the right way and watch me respond. I'll be at the front door when you get home from work, wearing only what nature gave me. Kiss me and I'm yours. Call [phone number] and ask for Daisy.

Wife Odyssey — Wife Odyssey: He may look like a grouchy old slob, but don't let his appearance deceive you. He's really a 'lonesome artist seeking a soulmate.'