…Exploring the role of the prankster as artist, activist and social observer and the significance of the prank in society.
Reality-TV-obsessed Richard Heene, whose theatrical Balloon Boy hoax transfixed the nation back in 2009, is back in the media. His son Falcon (the one everyone thought was accidentally in the homemade “flying saucer” when it took off) and his brothers have formed a band and written a song called “Balloon Hoax No Hoax.”
When you’re out of helium, try hot air…
Read an interview with the family from qz.com, “Catching Up With Balloon Boy and His Family, Five Years Later”
It’s 30 years later and Bob Zmuda, writing partner of the legendary prankster Andy Kaufman, won’t let his friend continue his quiet rendezvous with Elvis. Washington Post writer, Amy Argetsinger, ponders whether stoking decades-old rumors that Kaufman faked his death discredits the man and the astounding pranks he pulled while he was among us.
“Andy Kaufman: Why It’s Time to Celebrate the Comic and Bury the Death Hoax”
by Amy Argetsinger
Washington Post
October 9, 2014
Here we go again.
<img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-17338" 
Thirty years after Andy Kaufman died too young of cancer “” cutting short a brief, sensational career that changed the face of American comedy, and maybe even American irony “” the old Andy Kaufman death-hoax theory is back.
It”s new and improved for the Internet era, going viral now that the ragtag community of Andy Truthers has been joined by a credentialed ally, Kaufman”s longtime writing partner Bob Zmuda. In a new book co-authored by Kaufman”s girlfriend Lynne Margulies, Zmuda recalls years of conversations in which his friend outlined plans to exit show business by faking his own death.
“He said to keep a lid on it for 30 years,” says Zmuda in a phone interview. “It”s 30 years now. . . . What I”m doing is sending a telegram to Andy: It”s time to come in from the cold.” Continue reading “The Case for Giving Andy Kaufman a Rest”
From Emerson Dameron:
As seen on Futility Closet:
Here”s an imaginative newspaper hoax from the American West “” James Wickham, a “scientific English gentleman,” was said to have released two 35-foot whales in the Great Salt Lake in 1873:
Mr. Wickham came from London in person to superintend the “˜planting” of his leviathan pets. He selected a small bay near the mouth of Bear River connected with the main water by a shallow strait half a mile wide. Across this strait he built a wide fence, and inside the pen so formed he turned the whales loose. After a few minutes inactivity they disported themselves in a lively manner, spouting water as in mid-ocean, but as if taking in by instinct or intention the cramped character of their new home, they suddenly made a bee line for deep water and shot through the wire fence as if it had been made of threads. In twenty minutes they were out of sight, and the chagrined Mr. Wickham stood gazing helplessly at the big salt water. Continue reading “The Great Salt Lake Whales”
From W.J. Elvin III: An interesting study in mainstream media wiggling and waffling. They should have just said “We were suckered. Sorry.” But instead a lot of jabber about how they were just one of many, “maybe” dropped the ball as far as fact-checking and heeding warnings, blah, blah, blah…
The readers’ editor on”¦ how we fell into the trap of reporting Japan’s eyeball-licking craze as fact
bu Chris Elliott
The Guardian
August 25, 2013
The story was all over the web, but it was not especially difficult to cast doubts on the claim that there was an epidemic of tongue-induced pink eye
The web is voracious. It gobbles up stories, themes and memes like a monster from outer space. With the merest puff of wind to launch them, a bewildering slew of tales take off, powered by the perpetual motion of repetition.
The Guardian was among a crowd that made the mistake of filling the sails of one of the weirder stories to take off in this way. The article appeared on the Shortcuts blog. It aims to be a fast-paced humorous column, which is described as “trending topics and news analysis”.
[Video from Huffington Post]
The headline on the story, posted on 14 June 2013, is: “Eyeball-licking: the fetish that is making Japanese teenagers sick”. The author explains that the article will be about “oculolinctus, an eye-licking fetish that is currently sweeping across the schools of Japan like, well, like a great big dirty bacteria-coated tongue sweeping across a horrific number of adolescent eyeballs “¦ oculolinctus is being blamed for a significant rise in Japanese cases of conjunctivitis and eye-chlamydia “¦ It’s apparently seen as a new second-base; the thing you graduate to when kissing gets boring.” Continue reading “Eyeball-licking Craze? Really?”
Submitted by Larry Croft:
Bin Laden and The IT Crowd: Anatomy of a Twitter hoax
BBC News
23 May 2011
Rumours circulating on Twitter that Osama Bin Laden was a fan of The IT Crowd sitcom were an elaborate new media hoax. Here comedian Graham Linehan explains how he organised the ruse.
I spread a story on Twitter that in some of the videos seized from his compound during the Navy Seals raid, Osama Bin Laden was watching my sitcom The IT Crowd. I did it to illustrate the lightning speed at which a rumour can circulate and mutate on Twitter.
Only joking! I did it because I thought it would be funny, but it did circulate and mutate really quickly so maybe there’s a good lesson for us here. I mean really, it’s scary what Twitter can do. You can’t get more offline than my mother, and even she said to my brother, the day after the story “broke”, “Did you hear about your brother and Osama?”
So! It appears that one good way of starting a rumour is to pretend that the story is already circulating. Continue reading “Bin Laden and The IT Crowd: Anatomy of a Twitter hoax”