Around the World in Eighty Lies
January 31, 2024 5:28 AM Subscribe
If you'll pardon the half step away from the actual topic, there really should be a fake Atlas Obscura, full of articles that feel true but aren't.
Just a bent little Wiki where people write and add articles like "The Quaint Dutch Town Where Everyone Is a Dentist." Or "Maine's Museum to Paper Grocery Bags."
I'd read the hell out of that site.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:55 AM on January 31 [102 favorites]
Just a bent little Wiki where people write and add articles like "The Quaint Dutch Town Where Everyone Is a Dentist." Or "Maine's Museum to Paper Grocery Bags."
I'd read the hell out of that site.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:55 AM on January 31 [102 favorites]
I liked the story of the 400 year old stew; sad to know it isn't true.
posted by Termite at 5:58 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]
posted by Termite at 5:58 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]
The Onion Obscura?
posted by hydra77 at 5:58 AM on January 31 [29 favorites]
posted by hydra77 at 5:58 AM on January 31 [29 favorites]
Atlas ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ?
posted by Ishbadiddle at 6:07 AM on January 31 [30 favorites]
posted by Ishbadiddle at 6:07 AM on January 31 [30 favorites]
Back when I wrote and researched articles, I quickly learned to double check and link every fact to the information source to a ridiculous degree, because you could always count on commenters to find the smallest error. Now comments are gone, and so is crowd-sourced fact checking. Thanks, trolls.
posted by Miss Cellania at 6:23 AM on January 31 [18 favorites]
posted by Miss Cellania at 6:23 AM on January 31 [18 favorites]
hydra77: I'd really prefer to go back to the "Cronkite era." It's exhausting to not be able to trust anything or anyone.
People did trust the news in the Cronkite era, but should they have?
posted by clawsoon at 6:30 AM on January 31 [18 favorites]
People did trust the news in the Cronkite era, but should they have?
posted by clawsoon at 6:30 AM on January 31 [18 favorites]
I recognize that what he did was wrong, and that the people who he made false claims about were harmed. However, I appreciate that he apparently really likes writing and invention.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:36 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:36 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
His stories weren’t outlandish; they were well researched and populated with factual details, with believable quotes attributed to real people. Writing them was at least as much work as reporting truthfully would have been, suggesting they weren’t born of intellectual or professional laziness but some other, more inscrutable, motivation.This is an odd framing. Obviously the fake stories weren't well researched or populated with factual details: if they were, they by definition wouldn't have been fake. And I'm not a reporter but I'm pretty sure real journalism is a lot more work than making up a bunch of details, even if care is taken to achieve verisimilitude. Why aren't intellectual and professional laziness, combined with a desire for a paycheck, enough motivation?
posted by biogeo at 6:37 AM on January 31 [23 favorites]
If you'll pardon the half step away from the actual topic, there really should be a fake Atlas Obscura, full of articles that feel true but aren't.
DOT, if you ever want to drum up an online collective to write these for fun, please count me in. I have a soft spot for folksy weirdness in general.
posted by mochapickle at 6:38 AM on January 31 [15 favorites]
DOT, if you ever want to drum up an online collective to write these for fun, please count me in. I have a soft spot for folksy weirdness in general.
posted by mochapickle at 6:38 AM on January 31 [15 favorites]
It sounds like today is the day a bunch of people learn about Roadside America.
I miss the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society
posted by phooky at 6:39 AM on January 31 [16 favorites]
I miss the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society
posted by phooky at 6:39 AM on January 31 [16 favorites]
Founded in 2009, Atlas Obscura is an online publication specializing in descriptions and stories of offbeat destinations, created as the antithesis of the well-trod itineraries offered by popular guidebooks. It has attracted millions of dollars in funding and expanded into a travel planning app, a retail review site, and a food-focused vertical called Gastro Obscura.
hi I think I found why this happened
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:43 AM on January 31 [51 favorites]
hi I think I found why this happened
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:43 AM on January 31 [51 favorites]
I love the idea of a fake Atlas Obscura. Like the SCP Foundation but much less menacingly supernatural.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:45 AM on January 31 [21 favorites]
posted by rmd1023 at 6:45 AM on January 31 [21 favorites]
The cemetery tourism tips you won't find on Atlas Obscura.
posted by phooky at 6:46 AM on January 31 [5 favorites]
posted by phooky at 6:46 AM on January 31 [5 favorites]
For people who would love a fictionalized AO: Karen Elizabeth Gordon's Paris Out of Hand scratches some of the itch.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:52 AM on January 31 [7 favorites]
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:52 AM on January 31 [7 favorites]
I appreciate that he apparently really likes writing and invention.
That's cool if it's what you're into but suddenly becomes extremely uncool when instead of using it to write your novel or whatever, you pass your fiction off as truth.
Distrust of mainstream media is one reason why a growing number of people are relying on social media, like TikTok, as a primary source of news, despite the fact that platforms are rife with misinformation.
"Distrust of fire departments is one reason why a growing number of homeowners are relying on piles of oil-soaked rags, despite the fact they are a source of fires."
posted by axiom at 6:56 AM on January 31 [37 favorites]
That's cool if it's what you're into but suddenly becomes extremely uncool when instead of using it to write your novel or whatever, you pass your fiction off as truth.
Distrust of mainstream media is one reason why a growing number of people are relying on social media, like TikTok, as a primary source of news, despite the fact that platforms are rife with misinformation.
"Distrust of fire departments is one reason why a growing number of homeowners are relying on piles of oil-soaked rags, despite the fact they are a source of fires."
posted by axiom at 6:56 AM on January 31 [37 favorites]
For your fake Atlas Obscura, I offer a completely fake but apparently well-researched history of the F-19 Stealth fighter that I wrote because I love the specific fake design that some outlets used as their speculative version, so there were "real" pictures to source from the internet, as well as a scale model that I owned which allowed me some nice Photoshop fodder. I periodically get a flurry of clicks from it being linked to in aviation threads before somebody points out that it's not real.
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:12 AM on January 31 [16 favorites]
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:12 AM on January 31 [16 favorites]
I wonder how similar this is to that person who faked all of those Wikipedia articles about Scotland?
posted by indexy at 7:13 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]
posted by indexy at 7:13 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]
If you'll pardon the half step away from the actual topic, there really should be a fake Atlas Obscura, full of articles that feel true but aren't.
I'd love an online place that's like the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, which lives right in the most delightfully odd liminal place where truth and bullshit meet and can intermingle a bit (and not in a mean or cynical way -- it's truly a place of art).
posted by tclark at 7:17 AM on January 31 [20 favorites]
I'd love an online place that's like the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, which lives right in the most delightfully odd liminal place where truth and bullshit meet and can intermingle a bit (and not in a mean or cynical way -- it's truly a place of art).
posted by tclark at 7:17 AM on January 31 [20 favorites]
Making a "real" satirical travel site might take some hard work and risk, maybe chancing that the actual AO might do its own version and call it something like The Bureau of Unverified Reports. (Possibly based on actual unverified reports, of which they must surely have a plethora.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:18 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:18 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]
Obviously the fake stories weren't well researched or populated with factual details: if they were, they by definition wouldn't have been fake
It opens with the Moffatt article, which seems completely fake. But later in the article, it goes into more detail what was made up and what wasn't. He interviewed real people and accurately reported what they said; sometimes he accurately reported what people said but lied that they said it to him in an interview. Sometimes he figured out who were real local figures, put their names in, and then just lied. He included true obscure facts next to made up color. So the "well research and populated with factual details" is often correct.
It has attracted millions of dollars in funding and expanded into a travel planning app, a retail review site, and a food-focused vertical called Gastro Obscura.
hi I think I found why this happened
I know the knee-jerk reaction on metafilter is to blame VC funding for everything, but if you think an online magazine that seeks out quirky, strange stories submitted by random travellers is going to be less vulnerable to fraud of this type because they have smaller budget you may need to reimagine how the editing procedure would work in practice.
posted by mark k at 7:26 AM on January 31 [17 favorites]
It opens with the Moffatt article, which seems completely fake. But later in the article, it goes into more detail what was made up and what wasn't. He interviewed real people and accurately reported what they said; sometimes he accurately reported what people said but lied that they said it to him in an interview. Sometimes he figured out who were real local figures, put their names in, and then just lied. He included true obscure facts next to made up color. So the "well research and populated with factual details" is often correct.
It has attracted millions of dollars in funding and expanded into a travel planning app, a retail review site, and a food-focused vertical called Gastro Obscura.
hi I think I found why this happened
I know the knee-jerk reaction on metafilter is to blame VC funding for everything, but if you think an online magazine that seeks out quirky, strange stories submitted by random travellers is going to be less vulnerable to fraud of this type because they have smaller budget you may need to reimagine how the editing procedure would work in practice.
posted by mark k at 7:26 AM on January 31 [17 favorites]
Fair enough, you've got a point. I'd still dispute "well researched," but that's just a question of defintion, on which reasonable people may disagree.
posted by biogeo at 7:29 AM on January 31
posted by biogeo at 7:29 AM on January 31
You know, funnily enough, I now recall that the first time I encountered Atlas Obscura, I think I was pretty sure that it was exactly the sort of fake travel site a lot of you are saying you'd enjoy. At least the first article or two that I saw were so outlandish that, if my memory serves me correctly, I decided it was satire a la The Onion. I'm not sure for how long I held that belief, but I remember being vaguely surprised to learn that AO was about real places.
posted by biogeo at 7:33 AM on January 31 [5 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 7:33 AM on January 31 [5 favorites]
What would we call our fake Atlas Obscura?
I'm thinking maybe the Fantasist's Atlas. Nah, too hard to say.
Open to suggestions.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:01 AM on January 31
I'm thinking maybe the Fantasist's Atlas. Nah, too hard to say.
Open to suggestions.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:01 AM on January 31
Factless Obscura?
posted by oulipian at 8:06 AM on January 31 [18 favorites]
posted by oulipian at 8:06 AM on January 31 [18 favorites]
Also cf. the Zhemao Hoaxes in which a Wikipedia editor created an entirely fictitious history of medieval Russia. The fact that the hoax was uncovered by a novelist is particularly Borgesian.
posted by Ishbadiddle at 8:07 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]
posted by Ishbadiddle at 8:07 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]
Atlas Mendacia.
I don't know if the Latin conjugation is correct, but fake Lain is even better than real Latin in our case.
I'd still dispute "well researched," but that's just a question of defintion, on which reasonable people may disagree.
Fair, I think we're grading on a curve here. Research quality better than you might expect in the average fabrication.
posted by mark k at 8:08 AM on January 31 [6 favorites]
I don't know if the Latin conjugation is correct, but fake Lain is even better than real Latin in our case.
I'd still dispute "well researched," but that's just a question of defintion, on which reasonable people may disagree.
Fair, I think we're grading on a curve here. Research quality better than you might expect in the average fabrication.
posted by mark k at 8:08 AM on January 31 [6 favorites]
I wonder how similar this is to that person who faked all of those Wikipedia articles about Scotland?
You're probably thinking of the Scots Wikipedia scandal, in which a seemingly well-meaning, but deeply misguided American teenager decided to start contributing to the Scots language Wikipedia, without, you know, speaking Scots.
posted by zamboni at 8:24 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]
You're probably thinking of the Scots Wikipedia scandal, in which a seemingly well-meaning, but deeply misguided American teenager decided to start contributing to the Scots language Wikipedia, without, you know, speaking Scots.
posted by zamboni at 8:24 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]
Munchausen’s Gazeteer
posted by Phanx at 8:28 AM on January 31 [8 favorites]
posted by Phanx at 8:28 AM on January 31 [8 favorites]
Given that the first two articles by Mastbaum were apparently legit, I suspect they started making stuff up to hit deadlines or whatever, and having got away with it for a while, decided to see how far they could push the envelope.
posted by zamboni at 8:29 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
posted by zamboni at 8:29 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
there really should be a fake Atlas Obscura
Well, we've got Borges.
Distrust of mainstream media is one reason why a growing number of people are relying on social media, like TikTok, as a primary source of news
Oy. Out of the frying pan...
posted by gwint at 8:31 AM on January 31
Well, we've got Borges.
Distrust of mainstream media is one reason why a growing number of people are relying on social media, like TikTok, as a primary source of news
Oy. Out of the frying pan...
posted by gwint at 8:31 AM on January 31
Some of us might remember the jokers at Jetlag Travel who made up entire countries and published (parody) guidebooks: Molvanîa ("a land untouched by modern dentistry"). Previously, previouslier.
Following up on this topic, I didn't know that Lower Slobbovia dates back to Li'l Abner in the 1940's. Earlier still, the sometimes fake, sometimes real Freedonia/Fredonia.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 8:31 AM on January 31 [5 favorites]
Following up on this topic, I didn't know that Lower Slobbovia dates back to Li'l Abner in the 1940's. Earlier still, the sometimes fake, sometimes real Freedonia/Fredonia.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 8:31 AM on January 31 [5 favorites]
“Parts of the descriptions stem from accuracy but they have become distorted or read completely wrong to produce stereotypical or offensive results,” Kramer replied.
I am troll enough to get a kick out of someone harmlessly gaming the system, but apparently the author's Substack shenanigans weren't harmless. So I will not go looking for their remaining AO articles for amusement. No further attention needed.
posted by EvaDestruction at 8:31 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
I am troll enough to get a kick out of someone harmlessly gaming the system, but apparently the author's Substack shenanigans weren't harmless. So I will not go looking for their remaining AO articles for amusement. No further attention needed.
posted by EvaDestruction at 8:31 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
I'm sure I saw something about this in the Uqbar article of the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia.
posted by pracowity at 8:32 AM on January 31 [5 favorites]
posted by pracowity at 8:32 AM on January 31 [5 favorites]
Speaking of Latin and the Romance languages, are you aware that "west" in French, for instance, (ie. ou'est) derives from the interrogative "quo est" or "what is there?" while the term for "east" (ie. est) is taken directly the Latin word "est" or "there is"?
That makes sense within the knowledge of the world available to the Romans and their immediate linguistic predecessors where the east was the lands they knew directly of and traded with while the west was the Gauls, western Europe, and the unending vastness of the Atlantic ocean - at best a question to them.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 8:38 AM on January 31 [3 favorites]
That makes sense within the knowledge of the world available to the Romans and their immediate linguistic predecessors where the east was the lands they knew directly of and traded with while the west was the Gauls, western Europe, and the unending vastness of the Atlantic ocean - at best a question to them.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 8:38 AM on January 31 [3 favorites]
Not the same editorial issue but back in 2016 I was suspicious that some of the Atlas Obscura articles were undisclosed paid advertisements. I was wrong, they are not. I got a good answer from the site owner when I asked, some notes in a previous MeFi discussion. They do sometimes take sponsored posts but they are clearly marked. It also looks like they stopped doing that a few years ago.
posted by Nelson at 8:38 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]
posted by Nelson at 8:38 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]
I don't know how well it's aged, but the Slaka in Rates of Exchange made me laugh back in ancient times. Maybe you had to be there (here).
posted by pracowity at 8:39 AM on January 31 [3 favorites]
posted by pracowity at 8:39 AM on January 31 [3 favorites]
there really should be a fake Atlas Obscura
Well, we've got Borges.
Also got Calvino.
posted by LionIndex at 8:40 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
Well, we've got Borges.
Also got Calvino.
posted by LionIndex at 8:40 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
It's probably not this, but back before comics broke my fingers and crushed my spirit under its relentless grinding millstone, I was working on a project for Ape Entertainment (RIP) with the premise that it was based on an obscure comic from post-WWII, and was starting to get into light skullduggery to see if I could create a "real" history about it by generating Wikipedia articles, and such.
Failed/aspiring novelist, looking to "seed" content to that would be featured in future books for versmillitude? Likely not, but I'm probably not the only person who ever attempted to tread that path.
posted by Shepherd at 8:59 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]
Failed/aspiring novelist, looking to "seed" content to that would be featured in future books for versmillitude? Likely not, but I'm probably not the only person who ever attempted to tread that path.
posted by Shepherd at 8:59 AM on January 31 [4 favorites]
Metafilter: folksy weirdness in general
posted by theora55 at 9:00 AM on January 31 [6 favorites]
posted by theora55 at 9:00 AM on January 31 [6 favorites]
Speaking of Latin and the Romance languages, are you aware that "west" in French, for instance, (ie. ou'est) derives from the interrogative "quo est" or "what is there?" while the term for "east" (ie. est) is taken directly the Latin word "est" or "there is"?
Maybe this was meant to be a joke riffing on making things up and passing them off as real, if so I apologize for stepping on it. But I don't think this is true. Wiktionary identifies west and east as both deriving directly from proto-indoeuropean roots referring to those cardinal directions, via proto-germanic. West is identified as potentially cognate with Latin "vespers", ie, evening (West being where the sun sets). I think these words are older than Latin, French, or any Roman uncertainty about world geography.
posted by biogeo at 9:04 AM on January 31 [13 favorites]
I was taken in by the soup article & made an FPP of it.
posted by misteraitch at 9:07 AM on January 31 [8 favorites]
posted by misteraitch at 9:07 AM on January 31 [8 favorites]
I miss the works where this sort of thing was cute and fun and not an existential threat. See also conspiracy theory’s being seen as a fun subset of the Fortean brief and not the basis of half our government.
The 90s kid in me pines for this.
posted by Artw at 9:28 AM on January 31 [10 favorites]
The 90s kid in me pines for this.
posted by Artw at 9:28 AM on January 31 [10 favorites]
Also Atlas Obscura should be a fun book you leave on the side in the toilet for when you take a long dump and not “mainstream media”.
posted by Artw at 9:30 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 9:30 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]
The obvious thing to do is to make a fake entry for a real place; a "lovers bridge" with all the locks, or a tree where people hang socks/rags/clothes for luck, cairns where its lucky to add a rock, etc I've seen several of those. So something like this, make up a cute story, mention that sometimes Authority comes and cleans up the locks/socks/rocks, and put a few such tokens on the suitable location, and see how long it takes others to add to the collection, and in a generation it'll be 'oh yeah, the old lock bridge/sock tree/rock nest monster thing', that old old legend .. I live in a touristy place and we already bave such things as a 'famous' red door and a 'famous' remote mailbox....
posted by The otter lady at 9:50 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
posted by The otter lady at 9:50 AM on January 31 [2 favorites]
Atlas Fabricatoria
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:03 AM on January 31
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:03 AM on January 31
At least we can celebrate Alan McMasters and his invention of the toaster.
posted by TedW at 10:29 AM on January 31
posted by TedW at 10:29 AM on January 31
Stephen Colbert's truthiness back for more.... and this time it's coming for your quaint roadside attractions!
posted by adekllny at 10:58 AM on January 31
posted by adekllny at 10:58 AM on January 31
Those seeking a fake atlas experience might be interested in Kymaerica, which I learned about through, of course, Altas Obscura.
posted by mmmbacon at 11:39 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]
posted by mmmbacon at 11:39 AM on January 31 [1 favorite]
Atlas Obscura should be a fun book you leave on the side in the toilet for when you take a long dump
Allow me to introduce you to the Dictionary of Imaginary Places.
And yeah, when I first heard of Atlas Obscura, I assumed it was an online version of that.
posted by nickmark at 12:21 PM on January 31 [3 favorites]
Allow me to introduce you to the Dictionary of Imaginary Places.
And yeah, when I first heard of Atlas Obscura, I assumed it was an online version of that.
posted by nickmark at 12:21 PM on January 31 [3 favorites]
Lentrohamsanin: It has attracted millions of dollars in funding and expanded into a travel planning app, a retail review site, and a food-focused vertical called Gastro Obscura.
Granted I don't know and cannot find anything about the retail review site, but all the "funding" and "expanded" and "vertical" here makes it sound a lot more corporate than it is. The app is very pretty but fundamentally it's just a little clicky map where you can press which Atlas Obscura places you have been to or want to go to and save it in a profile. Gastro Obscura is just "Atlas Obscura but food", articles and videos about hyper-local/regional food traditions. You can hire them to do marketing campaigns though; that is definitely a good bit more corporate.
....But anyway here I am, falling into the classic MeFite trap of commenting on a really interesting FPP just to offer a pedantic clarification of someone else's comment. And this WAS a really interesting article! I am so curious why someone would write fake articles while making the equivalent amount of effort to just...actually doing his real job. Did he feel like he couldn't source interesting-enough stories? Was he acting out of resent that he found lucrative(ish) work writing nonfiction but not fiction? Did he find it satisfying to try to get one over on his bosses? Or his readers? Just fascinating to me!
posted by capricorn at 12:57 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]
Granted I don't know and cannot find anything about the retail review site, but all the "funding" and "expanded" and "vertical" here makes it sound a lot more corporate than it is. The app is very pretty but fundamentally it's just a little clicky map where you can press which Atlas Obscura places you have been to or want to go to and save it in a profile. Gastro Obscura is just "Atlas Obscura but food", articles and videos about hyper-local/regional food traditions. You can hire them to do marketing campaigns though; that is definitely a good bit more corporate.
....But anyway here I am, falling into the classic MeFite trap of commenting on a really interesting FPP just to offer a pedantic clarification of someone else's comment. And this WAS a really interesting article! I am so curious why someone would write fake articles while making the equivalent amount of effort to just...actually doing his real job. Did he feel like he couldn't source interesting-enough stories? Was he acting out of resent that he found lucrative(ish) work writing nonfiction but not fiction? Did he find it satisfying to try to get one over on his bosses? Or his readers? Just fascinating to me!
posted by capricorn at 12:57 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]
@biogeo Lol, yes, that was a fabrication
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 1:05 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 1:05 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]
You know what this reminds me of is The Museum of Jurassic Technology. I'm not sure if it is appropriate to appropriate the "credibility" (I use quotes as I do feel we are slipping back into the day's of The Front Page or His Girl Friday ) of Atlas Obscura but I am picking up on a sense of play and art which is maybe just not appreciatable to the same degree that that kind of thing was back before the guiding stars of reality fell from the sky.
posted by Pembquist at 1:15 PM on January 31
posted by Pembquist at 1:15 PM on January 31
So, I wrote off and on for Atlas Obscura for about a year (circa 2014). The Whelk even turned one of my articles into an FPP (without noticing I was the one who wrote it).
Back when I wrote for them, things seemed very VERY different in the editorial staff. I was working mostly with one of their editors, and she would often come up with ideas for articles (mostly listicle types of things) she'd send around to a bunch of us; we could then call dibs and would do the legwork. We could also pitch ideas if we had any of our own. I did a little of both; if you look on there you can find a handful of both listicles that she proposed, and a couple of unique ideas I pitched.
Sometime around 2015 or 2016, though, there seemed to be some kind of staff shakeup. My editor left for a different site, and AO felt harder to pitch ideas to; I think I pitched one last idea that they took, but it felt a good deal more unapproachable. I wrote that one last article and left it there.
I can promise that I really did speak to all the people I say I spoke to, and really did all the research for my own stuff. I also wonder if that editorial change paved the way for this kind of thing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:43 PM on January 31 [10 favorites]
Back when I wrote for them, things seemed very VERY different in the editorial staff. I was working mostly with one of their editors, and she would often come up with ideas for articles (mostly listicle types of things) she'd send around to a bunch of us; we could then call dibs and would do the legwork. We could also pitch ideas if we had any of our own. I did a little of both; if you look on there you can find a handful of both listicles that she proposed, and a couple of unique ideas I pitched.
Sometime around 2015 or 2016, though, there seemed to be some kind of staff shakeup. My editor left for a different site, and AO felt harder to pitch ideas to; I think I pitched one last idea that they took, but it felt a good deal more unapproachable. I wrote that one last article and left it there.
I can promise that I really did speak to all the people I say I spoke to, and really did all the research for my own stuff. I also wonder if that editorial change paved the way for this kind of thing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:43 PM on January 31 [10 favorites]
the falls might count as another strange and delightful exercise in the fabulist arts. I stumbled... eh, I came across it while browsing through the kanopy streaming catalog.
I paused watching after the 13th "case history" (out of 92), but only because I loved the comedic style, and I wanted to save it as a treat for the next time I'm feeling forlorn and miserable.
so maybe soon, yay!
in any case, I'm loving the post for bringing my attention to so many more examples of what I like to call "playful seriousness" (which I don't mean in a perjorative sense)
posted by neitherly at 2:39 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]
I paused watching after the 13th "case history" (out of 92), but only because I loved the comedic style, and I wanted to save it as a treat for the next time I'm feeling forlorn and miserable.
so maybe soon, yay!
in any case, I'm loving the post for bringing my attention to so many more examples of what I like to call "playful seriousness" (which I don't mean in a perjorative sense)
posted by neitherly at 2:39 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]
you could always count on commenters to find the smallest error. Now comments are gone, and so is crowd-sourced fact checking. Thanks, trolls
As a writer who had a commenter find an error in his writing just this week, I assure you that the fact-checking commentariat are alive and well.
posted by jordantwodelta at 2:46 PM on January 31 [2 favorites]
As a writer who had a commenter find an error in his writing just this week, I assure you that the fact-checking commentariat are alive and well.
posted by jordantwodelta at 2:46 PM on January 31 [2 favorites]
It stuck out to me that his apparent partner is Scott Coffey, a character actor I remembered from Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks.
Lynchian times, I suppose.
posted by rock swoon has no past at 2:47 PM on January 31
Lynchian times, I suppose.
posted by rock swoon has no past at 2:47 PM on January 31
I wonder how similar this is to that person who faked all of those Wikipedia articles about Scotland?
Not about Scotland, but about the Scots language
Speaking of Latin and the Romance languages, are you aware that "west" in French, for instance, (ie. ou'est) derives from the interrogative "quo est" or "what is there?" while the term for "east" (ie. est) is taken directly the Latin word "est" or "there is"?
Oh my no this is not correct. ouest and est are borrowings from Old English.
People may not trust the news, but misinformation is very slippery.
posted by os tuberoes at 2:49 PM on January 31 [4 favorites]
Not about Scotland, but about the Scots language
Speaking of Latin and the Romance languages, are you aware that "west" in French, for instance, (ie. ou'est) derives from the interrogative "quo est" or "what is there?" while the term for "east" (ie. est) is taken directly the Latin word "est" or "there is"?
Oh my no this is not correct. ouest and est are borrowings from Old English.
People may not trust the news, but misinformation is very slippery.
posted by os tuberoes at 2:49 PM on January 31 [4 favorites]
I know Moffat quite well and noted, on my last visit, that it had signs at its entrance boasting of its Dark Skies affiliation. I can also affirm that choosing a clear night to wander a little way out of town and look up - is well worth the visit. The thing is … there are lots of other remoter places in Scotland that might be seen to be in competition with Moffat - so it is absolutely credible that they might try to promote themselves as that place that takes the dark super seriously!
posted by rongorongo at 2:54 PM on January 31
posted by rongorongo at 2:54 PM on January 31
@os tuberoes
Yes yes. And a kiss may not be the truth but it is what we wish were true.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 3:33 PM on January 31 [2 favorites]
Yes yes. And a kiss may not be the truth but it is what we wish were true.
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 3:33 PM on January 31 [2 favorites]
If you'll pardon the half step away from the actual topic, there really should be a fake Atlas Obscura, full of articles that feel true but aren't.
DOT, if you ever want to drum up an online collective to write these for fun, please count me in. I have a soft spot for folksy weirdness in general.
Could make for a good game of Lexicon . (Lexicon on MeFi previously.)
posted by BrashTech at 4:40 PM on January 31
DOT, if you ever want to drum up an online collective to write these for fun, please count me in. I have a soft spot for folksy weirdness in general.
Could make for a good game of Lexicon . (Lexicon on MeFi previously.)
posted by BrashTech at 4:40 PM on January 31
@DirtyOldTown Uncyclopedia? I mean, it's not Unatlas Obscura, and that would be awesome. There's always plain old Wikipedia.
posted by garo at 5:36 PM on January 31
posted by garo at 5:36 PM on January 31
There's also the Fortean approach, in which the objective truth of the content is irrelevant, but the journalism is rigorous, and the investigations serious. (The Blue Mountains Panther is real)
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:52 PM on January 31 [3 favorites]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:52 PM on January 31 [3 favorites]
honestly anyone who enjoys this sort of "detailed writeups of fake knowledge" would surely enjoy John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise and its two sequels, I think
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:48 PM on January 31 [3 favorites]
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:48 PM on January 31 [3 favorites]
I don't care if the truth is less "interesting", I still want to know WHY he did this.
Did HBomberguy partly answer this actually, in that plagiarism video? Didn't he argue that people who plagiarise feel free to do it because they fundamentally don't respect their audience?
I guess that's more a possible answer to how rather than why. Was it purely money? Was there some kind of psychological reward? Some kind of saving-face or maladaptive coping going on?
posted by Baethan at 7:23 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]
Did HBomberguy partly answer this actually, in that plagiarism video? Didn't he argue that people who plagiarise feel free to do it because they fundamentally don't respect their audience?
I guess that's more a possible answer to how rather than why. Was it purely money? Was there some kind of psychological reward? Some kind of saving-face or maladaptive coping going on?
posted by Baethan at 7:23 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]
Didn't biogeo's first post say it all? It's a lot easier to start a project and then make a bunch of shit up than to start a project and finish it properly. I suppose we could diagnose exactly why this guy didn't feel beholden to honesty, but we all know that there's lots of other people out there who also don't feel a need to be honest, so it doesn't feel like such a big mystery to me.
posted by polecat at 10:31 PM on January 31
posted by polecat at 10:31 PM on January 31
I don't care if the truth is less "interesting", I still want to know WHY he did this.
I don't think it is a matter of not respecting the audience, I think it is probably that you cut one corner and find out it is easy and oh no one will notice and then all of a sudden everything is totally out of hand and you can't stop and you just keep going and the entire time you are a complete nervous wreck fearing that someone might catch you but at the same time you hope someone will call you out so you can at least stop lying because this is your life now and it isn't what you intended at all from the beginning, no, you were going to be honest, one of the good guys, but one little slip just led to this and now you are stuck.
posted by Literaryhero at 10:52 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]
I don't think it is a matter of not respecting the audience, I think it is probably that you cut one corner and find out it is easy and oh no one will notice and then all of a sudden everything is totally out of hand and you can't stop and you just keep going and the entire time you are a complete nervous wreck fearing that someone might catch you but at the same time you hope someone will call you out so you can at least stop lying because this is your life now and it isn't what you intended at all from the beginning, no, you were going to be honest, one of the good guys, but one little slip just led to this and now you are stuck.
posted by Literaryhero at 10:52 PM on January 31 [1 favorite]
A noble dictionary embiggens the smallest word.
posted by Kattullus at 1:01 AM on February 1 [1 favorite]
posted by Kattullus at 1:01 AM on February 1 [1 favorite]
Atlas obfusca.
posted by flabdablet at 6:00 AM on February 1
posted by flabdablet at 6:00 AM on February 1
Atlas ordura.
posted by flabdablet at 6:01 AM on February 1
posted by flabdablet at 6:01 AM on February 1
I really enjoy Atlas Obscura pages which do their best to look fake, but aren't.
Just look at that "vintage" photo of Dighton Rock with the guy in the top hat and vest laying across it as if he's posing for a painting like one of those proverbial French girls. That can't possibly be real. It must have been some modern-day hipster having a laugh with photoshop. Oh wait.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:23 AM on February 1
Just look at that "vintage" photo of Dighton Rock with the guy in the top hat and vest laying across it as if he's posing for a painting like one of those proverbial French girls. That can't possibly be real. It must have been some modern-day hipster having a laugh with photoshop. Oh wait.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:23 AM on February 1
Update: I think I'm gonna make the fake Atlas Obscura site. I'm leaning toward "Atlas Mentira" for the name. "Mentira" in Spanish is "lie." It just feels easier to spell than the Latin option "Atlas Mendacia/Mendacium."
I'll probably post it on Projects soon.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:28 PM on February 1 [6 favorites]
I'll probably post it on Projects soon.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:28 PM on February 1 [6 favorites]
Personally I like Atlas Fabulae, but you make it you get to name it.
posted by biogeo at 3:16 PM on February 1 [4 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 3:16 PM on February 1 [4 favorites]
Atlas ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by flabdablet at 2:18 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 2:18 AM on February 2 [1 favorite]
To my eyes, Fabulae is, like Mendacia, a name that sounds better spoken but seems more likely to attract typos when rendered into a URL.
My kid is currently crafting a logo that is a combination of a sextant with the hobo code for "Do not bother going this way."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:43 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]
My kid is currently crafting a logo that is a combination of a sextant with the hobo code for "Do not bother going this way."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:43 AM on February 2 [2 favorites]
> The 90s kid in me pines for this
Does the 90s kid remember when Snopes started mixing in articles that were supposed to be satirical, but were just confusing?
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:15 AM on February 2
Does the 90s kid remember when Snopes started mixing in articles that were supposed to be satirical, but were just confusing?
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:15 AM on February 2
DirtyOldTown "Maine's Museum to Paper Grocery Bags." Perhaps you're thinking of The Umbrella Cover Museum, which is real, and charming.
posted by theora55 at 8:01 PM on February 2
posted by theora55 at 8:01 PM on February 2
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I'd really prefer to go back to the "Cronkite era." It's exhausting to not be able to trust anything or anyone.
posted by hydra77 at 5:53 AM on January 31 [32 favorites]