Beyonce Hoaxer Apologises
Daily Star Sunday
25th April 2009

The internet prankster who made Beyonce Knowles sound out-of-tune has apologised for the hoax that “got out of hand”.

Matthew Zeghibe tampered with a recording of the superstar performing on live TV last November (08) to make it sound like she is tone deaf.

The audio was leaked online and quickly grabbed the attention of fans, internet bloggers and shock jock Howard Stern, who aired the recording on his U.S. radio show.

The controversy prompted Knowles’ father Mathew to dismiss the tape as a fake, and finally Zeghibe came forward to confess his scam.

The art student is stunned his creation attracted so much attention, telling Rolling Stone magazine, “It was just for a good laugh. It was a goof, just for fun. I do a lot of parodies on my YouTube channel, and it just so happens this one got a little out of hand.”

But Zeghibe insists there’s a serious side to his musical tampering – he claims it shows how easy it is to manipulate singers’ voices to make them sound better and worse.

He adds, “I was just trying to make a point. I wanted to show people how easy it is to manipulate someone’s voice. If I can do it with a clip I pulled off of TV, imagine what they are doing on records and during live performances. The entire industry has been so manipulated, because there’s such an emphasis on perfection, so when something like this happens, it causes such a stir.”

From YouTube:

Check out the world’s first flying hotel!

thanks Don

From BaaStuds:

We took to the hills of Wales armed to the teeth with sheep, LEDs and a camera, to create a huge amazing LED display. Of sorts…

thanks Erin

From imacshuffle.com, created by @rfelix and @chriscoyier, the guys behind LyricSift, its companion iPhone app, and AreMySitesUp:

Introducing the new iMac shuffle. It’s the desktop that had everything. Now, there’s less. We’ve taken out that pesky glass screen and carved the entire computer out of aluminum, for extra sturdiness. Why no screen? Well, we wanted to make the iMac shuffle even more lightweight than its predecessors, and make sure that there was nothing to distract you from the Apple logo. For inspiration, we looked to our newest, most brillant product… the new iPod shuffle.

Amazingly Uncomplicated
Taking out the screen allowed us to make the iMac even thinner. Seriously, if we turned it to the side, you nearly wouldn’t be able to see it. We’ve also built in our latest technology – VoiceOver. We liked moving the iPod controls out of the iPod shuffle so much that we decided to replace the keyboard and mouse with the same elegant input device…our inline remote. With the combination of VoiceOver and the remote, you’ll never miss your old screen. Who needs all those colors anyway? We’ve enclosed a complete 72,000 page manual that will tell you everything you need to know about navigating using the remote. Using just those 3 buttons, remote, you can easily jump to any window, launch any program…edit multi-layered Photoshop documents, anything your heart desires, you can imagine doing.

Ports? Who needs those? (more…)

Submitted by journalist Mike Ibanez based on his article published in Cultura/s, October 31, 2008:

In 1991, an episode of the TV 2 show Camaleó (Chameleon), called La Mort [The Death] became a small War of the Worlds. About 1/3 of the way through the show, the drama was interrupted by a special news bulletin announcing that a coup d’état was in progress in the USSR. It was staged so well that other spanish media – TV, radio, etc – broadcast the (fake) news. And the confusion started (the news bulletin begins at approximately 8:30)…

The program was cancelled, however, reality is sometimes stranger than fiction, and 6 months later there was an actual coup d’état in the USSR against Gorbachov just as Camaleó has predicted. Here is Mike’s article in Spanish:

La Guerra de los In-Mundos (more…)

The Fine Art of Responsible Journalism
TOL.cz
2 February 2009

A Czech paper’s childish prank on the Entropa hoaxer makes a mockery of press freedom.

By now, most of Europe (if not the world) has heard of David Cerny, the Prague prankster who pulled a fast one on the Czech government. Instead of creating a sedate piece of art to hang in one of the European Union’s main buildings in Brussels – highlighting the current Czech presidency – Cerny chose to parody sensitive stereotypes of each of the EU’s member states. And not only that: he concocted a massive hoax, a “mystification” as the Czechs call it. The supposed contributors to the Entropa installation from each EU country were mere creations, as Cerny and a couple of friends had done all the work, from the sculptures to the ludicrous artist bios.

Then it was the turn of the Czech Republic’s leading daily newspaper, Mlada fronta Dnes, to get in on the fun, as the paper ran a mock interview with Cerny, making up quotes from the artist and showing a disturbing propensity to disregard journalistic ethics. As the highest-circulation “serious” newspaper, Mlada fronta is something of a bellwether for the state of the Czech media. This latest episode is not encouraging on that front. (more…)

Submitted by Steve Lambert:

Fictional Moldovan Soccer Phenom Tells All
by Brian Phillips
Slate.com
January 23, 2009

Inside the ingenious hoax that fooled the British sports press.

On a typical weekday, the English soccer press devotes itself to unsubstantiated rumors, manufactured scandals, and bikini pictures of players’ girlfriends (who seem to roam the earth together in a giant conjugal yacht, like the Beatles in Yellow Submarine). This week, however, thanks to an ingenious hoax that took in the Times of London, the soccer press has been engrossed by Moldova. Specifically by one Moldovan teenager, who is not, as it happens, a real person.

Earlier this month, the Times ran a feature called “Football’s Top 50 Rising Stars,” which featured at No. 30 a 16-year-old attacker named Masal Bugduv, whom the paper, never one to fear irony, described as “Moldova’s finest.” A bright future seemed to fill Bugduv’s windscreen. The young player had been “strongly linked,” the Times said, with a transfer to the London club Arsenal, had already earned a mention on the popular soccer news site Goal.com, spawned excitement in online forums, and been portrayed as something of a savior by the magazine When Saturday Comes, which introduced him as “one bright spot” amid Moldova’s nationalist strife.

But as the old scout’s adage says, even the most talented young striker will struggle if he has no corporeal being. (more…)

[Ed. note: Author Paul Maliszewski published an interview with Joey Skaggs in McSweeney's, Volume #8, August 2002.]

Michael Dirda on “Fakers”
by Michael Dirda
The Washington Post
January 18, 2009

The Madoffs of the world tell us what we want to hear.

Fakers: Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters, and Other Great Pretenders, By Paul Maliszewski, New Press. 245 pp. $24.95

Paul Maliszewski grew interested in the psychology of faking and forgery when he worked as a young journalist for a small business magazine. Bored, he began to send in letters to the editor under various pseudonyms. These letters, commenting on recent articles, were sly exercises in satire and humor. For example, when the Dow fell in 1997 “Gary Pike” wrote in to describe how he had been “listening” to the Dow, but until one day “I called and called, but the Dow said nothing in return, answering only in silence.” As Maliszewski clearly knows, the Tao of Asian philosophy is pronounced Dow, and in a famous phrase “The Tao is Silent.”

Building on his personal experience with hoaxing, Maliszewski gradually began to publish articles — in the Baffler, McSweeney’s and Bookforum, among other periodicals — about the nature, variety and meaning of modern fakery. Collected here, these pieces cover the phony journalism of Jayson Blair of the New York Times and Stephen Glass of the New Republic; the whole-cloth memoirs of James Frey; the art forgeries of Elmyr de Hory and Han van Meegeren; the provocations of conceptual artists like Sandow Birk (who created a series of “historical” paintings about a supposed war between Northern and Southern California) and Joey Skaggs (who constructed an elaborate website for a nonexistent organization promoting cemeteries designed to resemble theme parks); brief histories of some imaginary poets and their work (the Spectra hoax and the Ern Malley affair); and, finally, novelist Michael Chabon’s “fictional” memoir about his childhood encounter with a Holocaust survivor who turned out to be a Nazi soldier, only who wasn’t since he didn’t really exist. (more…)

NY Times admits to fake letter
BBC
December 23, 2008

The New York Times has said a letter purporting to be from the mayor of Paris that attacked Caroline Kennedy’s bid for a Senate seat was a fake.

The letter, which was signed with the name of Bertrand Delanoe and printed in Monday’s paper, called Ms Kennedy’s bid “not very democratic” and “appalling”.

The New York Times said it had failed to check whether the letter, which was sent by e-mail, was authentic.

It said it had expressed its regrets to Mr Delanoe’s office in Paris.

The letter asked what title Ms Kennedy had to apply for the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton, who has been named secretary of state by US President-elect Barack Obama.

“We French have been consistently admiring of the American Constitution, but it seems that recently both Republicans and Democrats are drifting away from a truly democratic model,” the letter said.

“Can we speak of American decline?” (more…)

From André Gattolin:

Belgian people have loved borderline pranks and nonsense humor for a long time. In 1943, during the German occupation, Belgian Nazi opponents published a fake issue of Le Soir, the major French-speaking newspaper in Belgium, making fun of Nazi invaders (with an underground circulation of 300 000 copies!). Most of them were arrested and shot…

Today, in a less dramatic situation, a small Brussels-based advertising agency So Nice, which focuses on viral marketing campaigns, argues that, due to the global economic crunch, one of their 8 employees has to be fired by the end of January and asks Internauts to vote for who it will be! In Reality TV style, the agency created a dedicated website.

I suspect they’ll probably not sack the poor winner of this very special contest. Their real intention appears to be to produce some buzz about the agency, hoping to land some new clients.

Yes, it’s just another example of the advertising industry stealing culture jamming techniques to make money… (not new!) But we must admit, this time, it is pretty well done.

Here’s an article in English about the project.

Update: Links at end of story added November 13, 2008

A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence
by Richard Pérez-Peña
The New York Times
November 12, 2008

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times. (more…)

From CNNBC Video Friday, November 7, 2008:

Obama’s Loss Traced To Joey Skaggs
Single Nonvoter Tipped Election To McCain-Palin Ticket

Don’t let any of your friends be that one missing vote on Election Day. Customize this video for your friends. Enter their names and email addresses here to send them each a personalized version of this video with their name in it.

Paid for by MoveOn.org Political Action, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

thanks Kathy

Submitted by Dino D’Annibale:

Media: Wine Spectator drinks a hearty glass of blush
by Jerry Hirsch
Los Angeles Times
August 22, 2008

The magazine praises a Milan restaurant that doesn’t exist. Wine critic and author Robin Goldstein cooked up the hoax.

Milan’s Osteria L’Intrepido restaurant won Wine Spectator magazine’s award of excellence this year despite a wine list that features a 1993 Amarone Classico Gioe S. Sofia, which the magazine once likened to “paint thinner and nail varnish.”

Even worse: Osteria L’Intrepido doesn’t exist.

To the magazine’s chagrin, the restaurant is a Web-based fiction devised by wine critic and author Robin Goldstein, who said he wanted to expose the lack of any foundation for many food and wine awards.

To pull off the hoax, Goldstein created a bogus website for the restaurant and submitted an application for the award that included a copy of the restaurant’s menu (which he describes as “a fun amalgamation of somewhat bumbling nouvelle-Italian recipes”) and a high-priced “reserve wine list” well-stocked with dogs like the 1993 Amarone. (more…)

From Artnet News, July 31, 2008:

Media Artist in Karadzic Hoax

…Speaking of nihilistic art pranks from Eastern Europe, here’s one that made it into the news section of the New York Times: A “media artist” who goes by the handle Tristan Dare managed to snare journalists by setting up a fake web page advertising the alternative medicine practice of Radovan Karadžić. Karadžić, of course, is currently facing charges of war crimes in the International Criminal Court for helping plot the slaughter of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in the ‘90s, and was recently apprehended in a Belgrade suburb, where he was posing as an alternative healer by the name of “Dr. Dragan David Dabic.” Apparently seeing an opportunity, the artist immediately registered the website www.dragandabic.com and put up a fake biography in Serbian and English.

A notably dry bit of satire, the deliberately bare-bones site describes “Dabic” as “one of the most prominent experts in the field of alternative medicine, bioenergy, and macrobiotic diet in the whole of the Balkans,” gives dubious biographic details and features a few photos of the long-haired fugitive giving lectures. It even specifies that he “eats locally produced organic, unprocessed natural food,” and lists his favorite Chinese proverbs (“Teacher opens the door, but you must enter by yourself,” etc.). Reached via email, Dare told the Times that false information from the site had appeared in stories by Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Le Monde, among others. “It was supposed to be believable,” he wrote.

image: dragandabic.com

Submitted by Uwe Wolff, July 25, 2008:

Tom Kummer was a “journalist” living in L.A. who came up with the most incredible celebrity interviews for German magazines. He was a star and even the most serious papers were after him to publish his interviews. Only — he faked them all. After this was revealed and he was busted, he tagged his doings as “borderline journalism”. Not bad, he?

This was years ago and it caused an earthquake in the German media scene. One editor-in-chief lost his job, others had to go as well.

Now, a lifestyle magazine from Berlin called Dummy published a story on faker Tom Kummer, still living in L.A. and surviving as a paddle tennis trainer. The article was about a night out with Bruce Willis, Gwyneth Paltrow and Tom Kummer who introduced the author to the celebrities. Nice article, very nice. Only, it was fake and the media went for it again.

The editor-in-chief of Dummy, who wrote the piece, declared in a blog, that he never went to L.A., never met Tom Kummer and never had a night out with Willis and Paltrow. The fake story on a faker was eagerly lapped up by other media.

Link: Medienlese

image: blog.dummy-magazin.de