During the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, The Yes Men put out a statement in which they purported to be the Canadian environment minister, Jim Prentice. The statement pledged to cut carbon emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. The statement was followed by a response from the Ugandan delegation, praising the statement, that was also faked. A fake statement was issued on behalf of Environment Canada celebrating the fake Ugandan statement. Another fake statement was then put out blasting the falsehoods of the original fake statement. A fake story in a European edition of the Wall Street Journal was also posted online. Jim Prentice (Canada's Environment Minister) described the hoax as "undesirable". [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu on Dec 15, 2009 - 90 comments

The public's opinion of the field of climatology has been shaken by the leaked CRU emails. While it's arguable that the messages show any wrongdoing, many pundits have now reached the conclusion that global warming is a hoax, coverup and conspiracy, years in the making with millions of faked datapoints. Sarah Palin has written an editorial saying Obama should boycott the Copenhagen COP15 summit.
posted by mccarty.tim on Dec 9, 2009 - 270 comments

Mass: We Pray is an exciting new project from Boston based game developer Prayer Works Interactive. Watch the trailer for examples of the 24 different services you and your family can participate in. Don't listen to the sites that claim this is a hoax. Preordering begins today!
posted by scrutiny on Nov 20, 2009 - 45 comments

Woman tries to go through metal detector at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson aiport with her infant son, only to have his pacifier set off the alarm. TSA did the only rational thing and took the woman's son
posted by cgs on Oct 16, 2009 - 653 comments

NY Post Special Global Warming Edition (courtesy of The Yes Men). Thousands of hard copies hit the streets of New York at the crack of dawn.
posted by hellbient on Sep 21, 2009 - 33 comments

Net Hoax Convinces Germany of Fake U.S. Suicide Bombing Attempt All of Germany was bamboozled Thursday by a bizarre scheme that tricked the country’s main wire service into reporting an attempted suicide bombing in a California town — an attack supposedly perpetrated by a non-existent rap group called the “Berlin Boys.” [more inside]
posted by chillmost on Sep 12, 2009 - 18 comments

China's latest Internet obsession began with an anonymous post on a computer gaming forum: "Jia Junpeng, your mom is calling you to come home and eat." [more inside]
posted by tapeguy on Sep 6, 2009 - 34 comments

Reports spread around the internet about an offer by a Russian company to do pirate hunting cruises off the coast of Somalia. The news garners a swarm of comments and outrage, and it looks like we have the beginnings of a snowballing controversy. [more inside]
posted by happyroach on Jun 26, 2009 - 36 comments

With the world buzzing about celebrity deaths, it was an opportune moment for hoaxsters. A rumour that Jeff Goldblum had died spread quickly on Twitter, and "'Jeff Goldblum dead' was at 11am the third-most popular search term on Google". The actor's agent quashed the rumour, but not before Australian TV broadcast it as fact, complete with a touching montage tribute. Still, now he knows what it will be like when he really goes: "A surprise funeral? For me?"
posted by robcorr on Jun 26, 2009 - 78 comments

The trailer for "After Last Season" quietly appeared on the Apple site recently. But what is it? Some suggest a hoax, others a parody. Apple lists it as a comedy, IMDB as a thriller. [more inside]
posted by outlier on Mar 28, 2009 - 82 comments

What if you wrote to Alpo to ask if they have a senior citizen's blend, or to the AARP to inquire about the living status of Abe Vigoda? And what if they wrote back? That's the purpose of Jackassletters.com, part mischief, part mayhem, from MeFi's own cjorgensen. History has demonstrated the fun of hoax letter writing, for instance Kitty Piddle Soda from Avery's Beverages. Someone has to carry on the tradition. Tweaking the noses of power and fame. (via MeFi Projects)
posted by netbros on Mar 3, 2009 - 59 comments

In 1989 Rob Pike, Penn & Teller, and Dennis Ritchie (one of the creators of UNIX), prank Arno Penzias, with a funky speech recognition demo.
posted by oonh on Feb 19, 2009 - 6 comments

Jennifer Figge a 56 year old mother turned adventurer is the first woman to swim across the frigid Atlantic Ocean!. Or so they thought...
posted by Mastercheddaar on Feb 11, 2009 - 36 comments

Has man really set foot on the moon? There have certainly been a lot of claims that the whole Apollo missions were one giant hoax. Adam and Jamie at Mythbusters examine the claims of the Hoax Believers one by one. Did they use a wire rig or slow down the film to simulate the 1/6 moon gravity? What would it look like in real 1/6 G? Would a footprint in the lunar regolith have maintained it's shape even if there was no moisture to keep the material together? Why was the flag waving so much if there was no wind on the moon? Why are the shadows on the moon not parallel if they are coming from a single light source? Why can we see the astronauts when they are in shadows if there isn't a second light source? To finish it all off they shoot a laser at the moon to see if the reflector they supposedly left there is actually there.
posted by Sir Mildred Pierce on Dec 18, 2008 - 105 comments

A false expert and phony think tank fool bloggers and the mainstream news media. [more inside]
posted by lalochezia on Nov 12, 2008 - 110 comments

Ghosts, apparitions, angels, spiritual visitations and views of the future "The relationship between photography and the spirit world of ghosts, apparitions and angels during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a blending of popular belief and scientific fraud. The lack of sophistication in the public in an age of deeply held religious values and the generally accepted belief that the camera recorded truth allowed the unscrupulous to exploit the situation for financial gain...This online exhibition explores the diverse interactions between mortals and the spiritual world..." [via Bouphonia]
posted by mediareport on Oct 31, 2008 - 6 comments

Nothing But The Truth: Internet Hoaxes [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Oct 6, 2008 - 42 comments

Master of the hoax finally goes straight. Clifford Irving, author of the now infamous Autobiography of Howard Hughes, publishes his own autobiography, Phantom Rosebuds. Irving has already covered the story of that Hughes forgery pretty thoroughly in his earlier book, The Hoax, and Lasse Hallstrom retold the story in a film starring Richard Gere. Phantom Rosebuds though makes a case for the rest of Irving’s life - f for fake, the subsequent novels, the jail time and the dramatic consequences of the hoax which draw him into a world of espionage, renegade presidents, and rogue hitmen.
posted by blimp77 on Jul 11, 2008 - 5 comments

Jean Shepherd has been mentioned before but WFMU's Beware of the Blog has finally dug out an mp3 of Shepherd himself telling the story of "I, Libertine" (mp3 link) (wiki). I, Libertine was a literary hoax that began as a practical joke. Shepherd asked his listeners ("the Night People") to go into bookstores and ask for a book that didn't exist. Fueled by bewildered bookstore owners and distributors, I, Libertine eventually did end up as a genuine bestseller, proving his point that the process of choosing bestsellers was flawed.
posted by krautland on Jun 29, 2008 - 11 comments

The Great Moon Hoax of 1835. During the last week of August 1835, the New York Sun published a six-part article about the discovery - purportedly by renowned astronomer Sir John Herschel - of fantastical life on the moon, including herds of bison, blue unicorns, "a primitive tribe of hut-dwelling, fire-wielding biped beavers, and a race of winged humans living in pastoral harmony around a mysterious, golden-roofed temple." The public's reaction was a mix of credulity and skepticism. Read the full text of the serialized articles: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.
posted by amyms on Jun 24, 2008 - 37 comments

A fairly convincing website for a fake airline added to the outrage some felt in Philadelphia when newspaper ads promised airfares based passengers' weights. "Philadelphia to L.A., $2.25/pound" read the ads.
posted by polysigma on Jun 11, 2008 - 90 comments

The Biggest Drawing In The World.
posted by Armitage Shanks on May 23, 2008 - 82 comments

Darko Maver: In 1999, An artist is killed in his prison cell in Podgorica.

Early works. Writings. Culminating exhibit. His arrest. His death. [more inside]
posted by klangklangston on Jan 17, 2008 - 13 comments

Alison Jackson takes paparazzi shots of celebrity lookalikes. (NSFW) [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 19, 2007 - 8 comments

Lost? Why not consult a map? Because, according to a past exhibit at the British Library, the mapmaker might have a political agenda.
posted by Rykey on Nov 12, 2007 - 14 comments

Journalist Accepts $1 Million Challenge: Do $7250 Cables Sound Better or Not? (Or they could use these $43,000 cables instead). At least, it sounded like acceptance, even to James Randi. But then... maybe not. So while you're waiting to find out if you should spend that much for cables, maybe you can buy something from this collection of fine audiophile products. $400 for a pair tweeters may not be too bad. You can use them with your $350,000 amplifier, and your awesome-looking $100,000 turntable. Make sure you set aside $13,416 for a decent power cable, though, or you're just wasting your money.
posted by The Deej on Oct 21, 2007 - 147 comments

In the grand tradition of Kaycee Nicole, Anthony Godby Johnson, and Kodee Kennings, Jesse James was a studly volunteer firefighter and 9/11 hero who A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson's friend Audrey fell in love with over the internet. He turned out to be not what he seemed. None other than Harlan Ellison himself took part in the intervention, and the ensuing confrontation of the perpetrator was recorded for posterity. Via.
posted by Locative on Oct 12, 2007 - 88 comments

Betavoltaic Batteries are supposed to last 30 years, run cool, and be inert and harmless when depleted. The batteries, which generate electricity from radioactive decay, have a 50-year development history, but breakthroughs at the U.S. Air Force Research Lab are said to make the batteries practical for use in consumer applications. So why doesn't the Air Force lab's website feature this discovery? Maybe because it's a hoax, or a scam.
posted by Kirth Gerson on Oct 9, 2007 - 22 comments

The Mahikari Hoax The Harvard Asia Quarterly tells the story of Fujimura Shinichi, a once-renowned amateur Japanese archaeologist nicknamed 'God's Hands' (神の手） for his seemingly preternatural talent for finding artifacts, who was caught planting planting stone tools, some of which he had fabricated himself, others he had taken from other sites, at an archaeological dig in Miyagi, northern Japan. [more inside]
posted by KokuRyu on Oct 6, 2007 - 25 comments

The Papalagi. "Then many of these thought-mats are tied into bunches and pressed together ('books' the Papalagi calls them) and sent to every part of that great country. Very soon, everyone who takes these thoughts into themselves is infected. They devour these thought-mats as if they were sweet bananas ... [Y]oung and old gnaw at them like rats gnawing at sugar cane. That is the reason why so few of them are still able to think reasonable, natural thoughts, like those that every honest Samoan has.'
posted by No-sword on Aug 24, 2007 - 14 comments

Camp Okutta: give your child a summer to remember!
posted by generichuman on Aug 22, 2007 - 35 comments

Fearless experimenters viral marketers Web 2.0 Effect get pwned.
posted by doublesix on Jul 6, 2007 - 13 comments

Helen Duncan was the last woman to be convicted of witchcraft in Britain. This was in 1944. British authorities "were alarmed by reports that she had disclosed - allegedly via contacts with the spirit world - the sinking of two British battleships long before they became public." Her descendants still smart from the trial and there is a campaign to pardon Mrs Duncan, who some consider a martyred medium who could regurgitate ectoplasm out of her mouth. More than a decade before her trial legendary psychic researcher Harry Price exposed Mrs Duncan as a fraud in his essay The Cheese-Cloth Worshippers. If you want to judge for yourself you can take a look at the photographs Mr Price took of a séance performed by Mrs Duncan.
posted by Kattullus on Jul 5, 2007 - 75 comments

HelpMyBabyLive.com It comes down to this. If we can't raise the $50,000 in the next 3 months, we'll have to choose abortion. And you thought Save Karyn was bad. Via
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Jun 28, 2007 - 176 comments

Parting the Veil of Faery: The Colmore Fatagravures, said to date from the 1890s. "A Scottish adventurer, inventor, and photographer named Neville Colmore claimed to have constructed a device capable of '...parting the veil of Faery...' The device, which he called the Spectobarathrum, along with all of the images he claimed to have made were believed destroyed in a fire. I believe some of these images and related artefacts may have survived." [via Apothecary's Drawer]
posted by mediareport on Jun 19, 2007 - 16 comments

Don't waste your hard earned money on a pet psychic. That would be foolish! Especially since your baby has so much to say.
posted by The Deej on Jun 11, 2007 - 12 comments

Clive James on Scams and Hoaxes. "If the flim-flam man is sensible enough to offer you a return of only twice as much, the scam might even work. I was once defrauded of a heartbreakingly-large sum by a fellow writer who was smart enough to offer no return at all. True to her word, she didn't return my money either."
posted by Blue Stone on Apr 9, 2007 - 18 comments

The great Nat Tate hoax. 9 years ago, writer William Boyd and singer David Bowie (easily two of the coolest persons alive) joined forces to perpetrate one of the most elaborate art hoaxes to date: the "rediscovery" of Nat Tate, American Artist. A Boyd-penned biography was bombastically presented in Jeff Koons' gallery (who wasn't in on the joke)...to be enthusiastically lapped up by NYC's glitteratti. If only they had bothered to check the date...
posted by Skeptic on Apr 1, 2007 - 63 comments

A hoax that embarrassed the art world: Pavel Jerdanowitch and the Disumbrationist School of Painting . This "joke on the art critics" was perpetrated by Paul Jordan-Smith, a former pastor who had left his calling after being charged with heresy. He went on to become a writer, editor and journalist, and in 1924 he decided to commit blasphemy against "the strange gods of modern art." The Pavel Jerdanowitch Painting Contest was inspired by the hoax. "The challenge is to produce the worst painting every painted." It's not too late to submit your own entry for 2007. You can check out last year's entries, including the "loser" (winner), for inspiration.
posted by amyms on Mar 24, 2007 - 35 comments

The missive, on paper decorated with roses and butterflies addresses a Mr. Pulsifer, and implores him to "burn down Edith Wharton's house." Algonquin press goes just a touch overboard in their publicity for a new novel.
posted by Lentrohamsanin on Mar 6, 2007 - 9 comments

Everybody loves Zombies. Everybody loves killing Zombies. Nobody wants to suddenly wake up surrounded by Zombies. Not when you thought you were just playing a video game.
posted by Elmore on Feb 18, 2007 - 40 comments

The Hatto Hoax. Joyce Hatto has been described as "the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of." Her performances of piano works by Liszt, Schubert, and Rachmaninov were praised by classical afficionados for their "addictively beautiful sonority, cultured musicianship, and total instrumental mastery." Since she died in June 2006, however, Hatto has been at the center of one of the stranger scandals to hit classical music in years. It's starting to look like some or all of her treasured, hard-to-find recordings made since 1990 are not her playing at all. [Via]
posted by gottabefunky on Feb 16, 2007 - 52 comments

Stanley Kubrick's involvement in the space program. Did we go to the moon? Donald Rumsfeld,Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger tell all. via
posted by hortense on Feb 2, 2007 - 21 comments

Unhappy with her hair style, a bride flips out just hours before her wedding. Sobbing and screaming, she goes into the hotel washroom, rips apart her coiffure, and cuts her own hair. The episode is caught on video, posted to YouTube, and Farkalarity ensues. But the plot thickens. It turns out the bride is 22 year-old aspiring actress Jodi Behan, and the film was made by Toronto-based Ryerson University grad Ingrid Hass. It's a hoax, designed to put a lock on their film careers. We'll see more from these girls. Thursday on the Tonight Show, for a start.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium on Feb 1, 2007 - 65 comments

Last Friday a YouTuber by the name of "Mark Erickson" posted a video claiming to reveal an easter egg in Gmail that unlocked an invite to a yet to be announced Google beta service called Google TV. Using some relatively fancy spoofing, he showed a screencast of how logging in and out of Gmail over and over again would eventually unlock the invite. Many greasy Google fanboys (like me) followed his instructions, logging in and out dozens, and dozens and dozens of times. Eventually, we realized it was a hoax. In fact, this is what "Erickson" does, post fake technology demo videos on YouTube which lead you on wild goose chases. Also see his production company and some of their YouTube work (especially the alternative intros to "Designing Women" and "Golden Girls"). Clever little shit.
posted by JPowers on Jan 31, 2007 - 29 comments

Belgium is no more. Flanders has unilaterally declared independence, and the king has left the country in protest, RTBF reports.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 14, 2006 - 54 comments

"This was painted by a person with a rare and severe mental disorder. He was constantly seeing his own fantasies all around him. He also had a certain phobia..." (via Digg). The image is an imperfect reproduction of a particular postcard dated 1972. A blogger (in Russian) claims his psychiatry professor found one aspect of this eerie painting that reveals the patient's disorder. Allegedly, only one of his students in the past 15 years has figured it out. The psychoanalytic mystery has piqued the interest (in Russian) of the online community. A number of supplemental hints from the professor and thousands of guesses later, the case remains unsolved. Skeptics have already decried the mystery as a traffic-boosting hoax, but a few signs still point to its authenticity. Most notably, the artist's reproduction of another classic painting contains the following note: "transferred in 1990 from Moscow mental hospital."
posted by themadjuggler on Dec 3, 2006 - 113 comments

Directory of UFO/aliens/crop circle videos. From the really lame fakes to the completely misinterpreted (watch the time counter) to the kind of neat to watch, but not exactly any sort of proof.
posted by Kickstart70 on Oct 14, 2006 - 19 comments

In case of The Missing Diver Mystery, all is not as it seems...
posted by Acey on Sep 8, 2006 - 9 comments

Japanese professor Kenji Sugimoto has a long-standing fascination with the brain of Albert Einstein. In the early nineties he travelled to the United States in search of it. This bizarre 1994 documentary (YouTube, multiple parts) by Kevin Hull (UK) chronicles his quest. Fake or real? [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Sep 1, 2006 - 12 comments