The Elaborate Hoax: 2010 as the Year Hoaxers Went Beyond Fooling the Masses

Nearly 72 years ago, Orson Welles' infamous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast hoodwinked more people than it should have in America, considering it wasn't really a full hoax. Because there were as many radio network surfers in 1938 as there are for TV watchers in 2010, too many missed the periodic announcements that what they were hearing wasn't real. Yet the gullibility of the public in those days seemed attuned to the times when an enormous amount of learning was yet to be done in the next 72 years. That singular radio event eventually brought the public at large to a better place in weeding out the liars, despite plenty of boys and girls still crying wolf.

But while Orson Welles seemed overly progressive in the ability to fool people, his skills seem archaic now when compared to the evolution of the hoax in the last few years. And the evolution of it seemed to happen without any protracted, careful planning. 2010, especially, will likely go down as the year when the hoax went to an unprecedented new level with a couple of high-profile cases that fooled the media, its pundits and the overall public who were sure they'd never be fooled again.

The most celebrated (and alternately lambasted) hoax of the year was Joaquin Phoenix's documentary "I'm Still Here." As of this writing, it's still a mystery whether there was some kind of true intention behind the docu that was then altered at the 11^th hour to be a cerebral hoax. We'll likely never know for sure, though it's already obvious that Phoenix and Casey Affleck wanted a sociological statement on celebrities rather than just have the thrill of snookering everybody.

Then the hoax part of it turned to a tsunami that washed away the sociological impact on a perplexed public.

For those more attuned to the art of the hoax, it was clear from the get-go that what Phoenix was doing was a put-on. Nevertheless, there were just enough people out there who were pulled into the hoax. Most of those people seemed to be those who worked in media and around celebrities on a regular basis. Any brilliance behind the whole concoction was the knowledge that many people who work in media or for media look right through the eccentric behavior of a celeb as nothing out of the ordinary. Being Joaquin Phoenix, there seemed to be every intention of concluding what he was doing as very real and a natural move of an artist. Only a few mistakenly astute observers deemed it mental illness.

Those who don't work with celebrity culture regularly could apparently see right through it and perhaps explaining why the movie flopped at the box office with the average public. Call this hoax half-baked because it was only intended for a certain demographic.

It was a start, however, toward hoaxes prying on certain demographics that are used to taking things as they are. It's one to look out for in the future if it ever gets applied on a basis that brings more profound implications, such as in government leadership. We're at the point now where hoaxers have become so serious in their intention of penetrating our intellect that the hoax/reality line has blurred. A complex and convincing hoaxer in politics could easily make inroads by being adored by the public.

One may be out there as you read this, drawing up a plan on a laptop in his or her's secret war room.

What's the worst possible kind of hoax, though? It also happened this year and may alter how everybody judges one another down the road.
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We can only thank God that Vancouver, WA resident Bethany Storro didn't make an appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" after saying an unknown woman threw acid in her face along a quiet, downtown street corner in September of this year. Had Storro gone on Oprah's show, the impact of it all being a hoax would have been more monumental than it ultimately turned out. The most significant implication behind it all, however, is in the most painful realization: Storro completely had the public in her grip of sympathy with her sweetness and sincerity.

The believability of a genuine, sincere person has been near rock solid for decades if not for centuries. At one time, anybody attempting an elaborate lie or hoax through a sincere exterior could be ratted out by a simple education in reading body language or studying the art of the eye blink. We're in new territory, though, when a person shows absolutely no sign of lying, exudes a very sincere and empathetic presence and then pulls the rug out from under everybody who empathized over the sincerity.

Bethany Storro created the person who cried wolf, and who ultimately was the wolf. Of course, this new hoax was instigated by mental illness, which is the only way it could have happened. I've written before about the evolution of the liar and how some criminals, through some overlooked process of evolution, manage to show no visual cues of lying. (See Resources) But the hoax is a whole different manner from being planned out like a novel rather than the seeming spontaneity of invention in the believable lie. The more elaborate hoax may have mental illness origins, yet doesn't mean the next person who attempts an elaborate one will need any mental evaluation.

A more likely outcome from the Storro case is going to be the downfall of the person who cries wolf and who really did see a wolf. Precedents in how we view humanity are constantly in the flux of evolution to points where it could equal a Kafkaesque litigation nightmare if someone's automatically guilty as hell before being presumed innocent.

While that's developing in the courts and we design a technical means to determine who the true perpetrator of a hoax is through brain scans, another interesting development may be underway.

It may turn out that all those notables we thought were guilty as hell and on career suicide watches will hold concurrent press conferences revealing their plights as all...hoaxes.

Resources:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1746564/anatomy_of_the_lie_drew_peterson_as.html?cat=7