A TALE OF HOAX

According to the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the word ‘hoax’ is an industrial age addition to the English language, where it first appeared in 1808 A.D.  

The word

The English philologist Robert Nares, 1753-1829 A.D., said that word ‘hoax’ was coined in the late 18th century as a contraction of the verb ‘hocus’  dictionary meaning of which are ‘to cheat,’ or ‘to impose upon.’ ‘Hocus’ is short for ‘hocus pocus’ which magicians chant before their tricks.

Human psyche

Everybody loves a good story. More unbelievable the tale, the more people are willing it to be true. Their thinking being, ‘surely nobody would go to such lengths to lie without good reason.’ It is this very thought that time and again gives motivation to certain people ‘to attempt to fool the general public.’ The hoaxes exploit human psychology by preying upon a number of human traits including good will, naivety, greed, fear and anxiety.

A disclosure

Every now and then there comes certain revelation that seems wild for people to wrap their heads around. Here are a few such tales from field of science, literature and internet, enjoy!

Scientific hoaxes

In 1725, a collection of stones on the outskirts of a Bavarian town was brought to Johann Beringer, chair of Natural History at the University of Wurburg, by a few of his students. The 2000 stones were curved in images of, lizards in their skin, birds with beaks and spiders etc. Beringer speculated that the stone was fossilized relics from the Great Flood. He was so sure that he wrote a book on it. The truth was that the stone had been planted by two of Beringer’s colleagues. A 10 foot long petrified human body, the Cardiff Giant, was discovered by a group of workers who were digging a well in William Newell’s farm in 1869. The truth was that, an atheist named George Hull had created a giant of gypsum as a prank on a fundamental minister who believed that Earth was once habituated by giants. Fragments of a humanlike skull, an apelike jawbone with two worn molar teeth, some stones tools and fragments of animal fossil, all discovered in a gravel pit by Charles Dawson in 1912. The skull was named, Piltdown man, and was hailed as the missing evolutionary link between apes and human. The truth was Dawson had planted the fossils, but was long dead when his hoax was revealed to the world. A British man named Ray Santilli in 1995 announced he had gotten the footage; of an autopsy of an alien whose spacecraft had crashed in summer of 1947, in Roswell, New Mexico, from a retired military cameraman. The truth, Santilli admitted in a documentary in 2006, to staging and recording the entire autopsy. But, he stood to his claim that the actual footage existed, and he only filmed the reenactment because the original footage was in bad shape.         

Literature hoaxes

In 1983 the newspaper Stern had announced the discovery of 60 small notebooks, claimed to be the personal diary of Adolf Hitler. On May 6th, 1983, West Germany’s Federal Archives released the results of a forensic investigation labeling the diaries to be hoax. A book consisting of 24 chapters that claimed to document a plot for Jewish world domination, the protocols of the Elders of Zion, might just be the most dangerous hoax in history. In the struggle for the control of Europe in the middle ages between the Catholic papacy and the crowned heads of Europe, the church seemed to have an upper hand thanks to the document. The Donation of Constantine, the document claimed that the church had transferred vast amount of land and political control from Roman Emperor Constantine1 to Pope Sylvester 1 in the 4th century A.D This turned out to be one of the most important forgeries in Europe history.    

Internet hoaxes

In 2001, an image of a helicopter performing a training maneuver in front of the Golden gate along with a white shark was passed along via email, claiming it be the National Geographic photo of the year. The truth was the image was a composite of two separate images; the helicopter’s and the shark’s. A 16 year old girl named Bree began posting videos blogs about her everyday life under the Youtube user name; lonely girl 16. The video gained a following when the girl’s parents went missing. This was proved to be fictional. In 2007, Household hackers hit big time when their viral video demonstrated how to charge an iPod using an onion and a glass of Gatorade. It was a fake.   

Why people create hoax

Who can forget the various Ponzi scheme’s over the years, which lured investors and paid profit to earlier investors by using funds obtained from newer investors. A hoax occurs when a person or group intentionally make up a fake story and pass it off as the truth. People create hoaxes for the following reasons: to draw attention to their fraudulent skills, to gain financial benefit through deceit, sociopathological hoaxers will either put their bait out or target specific individuals to vilify or discredit, especially those who pose a threat, to feed people’s secret prejudices and benefit, and lastly, it is fun to fool people.