Media Pranks - The Art of the Prank

August 6, 2007January 15, 2019

Author of Fake Steve Jobs Blog Outed

“˜Fake Steve” Blogger Comes Clean
by Brad Stone
New York Times
August 5, 2007

San Francisco “” For the last 14 months, high-tech insiders have been eating up the work of an anonymous blogger who assumed the persona of Steven P. Jobs, Apple”s chief executive and one of the world”s most famous businessmen.

The mysterious writer has used his blog, the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, to lampoon Mr. Jobs and his reputation as a difficult and egotistical leader, as well as to skewer other high-tech companies, tech journalists, venture capitalists, open-source software fanatics and Silicon Valley”s overall aura of excess.

The acerbic postings of “Fake Steve,” as he is known, have attracted a plugged-in readership “” both the real Mr. Jobs and Bill Gates have acknowledged reading the blog (fakesteve.blogspot.com). At the same time, Fake Steve has evaded the best efforts of Silicon Valley”s gossips to discover his real identity. Continue reading “Author of Fake Steve Jobs Blog Outed”

July 29, 2007January 15, 2019

Keeping it in Czech

Submitted by Peter Schlager:

Czech Dream (ÄŒeskà½ sen in Czech) is a documentary film directed by two young Czech directors, Vàt Klusà¡k and Filip Remunda. It records a large-scale hoax perpetuated by Klusà¡k and Remunda on the Czech public, culminating in the “opening event” of a fake “hypermarket”. The filmmakers succeeded in attracting more than 3 thousand shoppers to an empty plain for their “grand opening” on May 31, 2003. What looked like a huge building from a distance was actually only a canvas facade backed by scaffolding.

The film hit selected theaters in the U.S. starting in June. Check here for the remaining dates in September for Seattle and Chicago.

The “bloody trailer” and a film scene can be downloaded here. Bloody trailer is in quotes because there appears to be a “blood-free” trailer which may be more aligned with reality (both are available on the DVD which is for sale).

Here’s some movie footage [9:30]: Continue reading “Keeping it in Czech”

June 23, 2007January 15, 2019

Weather report: Expect a brief mushroom cloud coming from the east

Anonymous members of the Czech art group Ztohoven hacked into a Czech Television (ÄŒTV) location camera on June 17, 2007 during the TV weathercast and in real time broadcast their own footage of a nuclear explosion over the landscape of a town named Black Mine. The picture then changed and instead of Black Mine, the website ztohoven.com came up on the screen.

Here’s the broadcast footage:

Read a statement from Ztohoven and an article from The Prague Post.

June 8, 2007January 15, 2019

Ante up for Africa

An Oxfam campaign stunt prior to the start of the G8 Rally in Rostock on June 2, 2007 in which the G8 leaders gamble away Africa’s future.

May 23, 2007January 15, 2019

The network TV show that pranked the other networks [English & Spanish]

Submitted by Raul Minchinela:

A Spanish TV channel created a prank and openly showed that biased, unchecked, fill-the-void information is the common currency for Spain’s broadcast networks. This is a veritable course on media pranking — creating and perpetrating a hoax, then documenting it and analyzing what happened on TV. And it has inspired more of the same. The prank as media commentary has taken the media. Welcome to Spain.

The goal of media pranks is to show how information is manipulated by leaking false news into newscasts that is more revealing than the actual truth. In creating a news story that should exist, we see that the media do not listen to reality, but rather expect specific things to happen according to a pre-determined structure. Anything that does not fit that mold is simply not heard and, consequently, not shown on TV.

The second phase of a media prank invites, and expects, media outlets to confess that the leaked prank is in fact false news — that they broadcasted the material not because it was real, but because it “fit” what was expected.

With that in mind, the perfect horizon in the “media prank world” would be an actual TV show that created unbiased media pranks. Their rival channels would fall for them, and then the TV show would create an hour-long special about how every top-watched program broadcasted false news, asking them to publicly admit that it was all a prank. In that perfect world, that portion of the show providing commentary about the TV’s biased perspective of the world, including the lies and the unchecked information and the sensationalist let-the-s**t-hit-the-fan attitude, would be presented by a comedian with a sharp-tongue.

Guess what? This happened in Spain on May 11, 2007. All of it. Continue reading “The network TV show that pranked the other networks [English & Spanish]”