[arg_discuss] ARGs as scams?

[Tony Walsh]

Beth A. Long wrote:
> Any good examples of people failing to distinguish an ARGs fictionality?
>   
I'm not sure what qualifies as a good example, but there were a couple 
of incidents last year that kind of annoyed me (and I'm sorry if anyone 
on this list was involved... for what it's worth a lot of people thought 
these were brilliant ideas).  Some of you may recall ARGTalk, which 
masqueraded as a legitimate ARG news site but turned out to be part of a 
game 
[http://www.secretlair.com/index.php?/clickableculture/entry/argtalks_bait_and_switch/].  
Then there was a case where someone (a fan, apparently) added the 
fictional Jamie Kane to the real Wikipedia 
[http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/13/bb_punks_wikipedia_i.html].

On a related tangent, I created a mini-site about 5 years ago called 
Babies With Beards [http://www.secretlair.com/babieswithbeards/] , which 
has since gotten millions of views from around the world -- the premise 
of the site is ridiculous, but many people believed that the content was 
real.

I suppose this shows that if people are willing to believe babies can be 
born with manicured facial hair, then it must be a cakewalk to pass off 
well-crafted, reality-based fiction as the truth.

-=-
Tony Walsh
416.367.3132
tony at secretlair.com
home- http://www.secretlair.com
blog- http://www.clickableculture.com