Everyone Gets Spoofed

from the that-wasn't-so-hard... dept

It's amazing how easy it is to trick people these days. While similar systems have been around for ages, it seems that late last week, a website that generated fake CNN news stories suddenly found a mass (gullible) audience. First, it convinced alumni and students from many different universities that the Olsen twins were attending their university and now it's apparently tricked people into believing that Microsoft had bought Vivendi's gaming unit. Of course, the biggest trick in both of these spoofs is that they were just believable enough to make most people not think critically about the news. The Olsen twins are at the right age to be looking at schools, and Microsoft has been rumored to be looking at Vivendi's gaming unit for quite some time. The site that created the spoofs has been taken down.

2 Comments | Leave a Comment..


If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...
 


 

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1.  

    In the good ol' days

    identicon
    dorpus, Feb 3rd, 2003 @ 5:11pm

    of the mid-90s when people were more gullible to the internet, I made up a fake AP news article about "Hydrogen Beer" being sold in Tokyo. The story made it to trade publications, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal. I posted it to soc.culture.japan on around New Years Day of 1994.

    Around that time, I also posted a spoofed AP article that Japan tested a small nuclear bomb on an outlying island, and Greenpeace took it seriously.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    A newbie once said

    identicon
    BP, Feb 4th, 2003 @ 7:37am

    I believe anything I read on the internet.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Save me a cookie
  • Note: A CRLF will be replaced by a break tag (<br>), all other allowable HTML will remain intact
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>
A word from our Sponsors...
Follow Techdirt
Flattr rss rss
Essential Reading
A word from our Sponsors...

Close

Email This