As April Fools’ Day looms, the curator of the Museum of Hoaxes has a word of caution for those who want to believe the unbelievable — a good hoax is hard to find.
Alex Boese, the curator of the museum which exists online only at museumofhoaxes.com — despite the lovely photographs of its nonexistent headquarters in San Diego — has issued his annual list of 100 top hoaxes and cautioned, in the interest of truth, that none of the items have changed this year before April 1.
“There are no new entries this year, you have to be pretty good to get on it,” said Boese, the author of three books on hoaxes including “Hippo Eats Dwarf, a Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S.”
“A hoax has to be a rare combination that gets something ridiculous that people will believe,” he added.
Wander through his Top 10 List. I really loved the Taco Liberty Bell hoax.
Have no fear … GW can do it.
You can’t have a good hoax anymore because either everybody believes everything or nobody believes anything and isn’t that a modern paradox?
I was once an editor of a university newspaper and we published a front page hoax story about all the washrooms going co-ed. Lots of females and some males quit school as a result of that hoax story, I’m sad to say. We never anticipated such a reaction.
One lady said she had to quit because the men “would be pissing all over the seats” and perhaps she was correct, although I still fail to see why that would cause her to change universities.
Nowadays if you published such a story, anyone who noticed wouldn’t care. So much for hoaxes!
We are cynical for a reason. We are lied to everywhere we turn. Trust no one.
April Fool’s Day online is horrible. Not because I get tricked, I have a calendar, but because all the stupid April Fool’s Day stories stay online and without fail someone weeks or months later stumbles on them, doesn’t notice the date, and posts a link to them. Pre-Internet a stupid article or story would appear and then be forgotten. Now these stupid stories keep circulating and resurface from time to time. They are just as bad as hoax emails that clutter mailboxes. “No mom, Bill Gates isn’t going to send you money for forwarding this email to me.”
From the hoax museum: It’s time to check out the birthplace and homeland of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/spaghetti.html
🙂