Hoax

For other uses, seeHoax (disambiguation).

TheDreadnoughthoaxersinAbyssinianregalia;the bearded figure on the far left is the writerVirginia Woolf.

Ahoaxis a widely publicised falsehood created to deceive its audience with false and often astonishing information, with the either malicious or humorous intent of causing shock and interest in as many people as possible.

Some hoaxers intend to eventually unmask their representations as having been a hoax so as to expose their victims as fools; seeking some form of profit, other hoaxers hope to maintain the hoax indefinitely, so that it is only when skeptical people willing to investigate their claims publish their findings, that the hoaxers are finally revealed as such.

History

See also:History of propaganda

Zhang Yingyu'sThe Book of Swindles(c.1617), published during the lateMing dynasty,is said to be China's first collection of stories about fraud, swindles, hoaxes, and other forms of deception.Althoughpractical jokeshave likely existed for thousands of years, one of the earliest recorded hoaxes in Western history was thedrummer of Tedworthin 1661.The communication of hoaxes can be accomplished in almost any manner that a fictional story can be communicated: in person, viaword of mouth,via words printed on paper, and so on. Ascommunications technologyhas advanced, the speed at which hoaxes spread has also advanced: a rumour about a ghostly drummer, spread by word of mouth, will affect a relatively small area at first, then grow gradually. However, hoaxes could also be spread viachain letters,which became easier as the cost of mailing a letter dropped. The invention of theprinting pressin the 15th century brought down the cost of a mass-produced books and pamphlets, and therotary printing pressof the 19th century reduced the price even further (seeyellow journalism). During the 20th century, the hoax found a mass market in the form ofsupermarket tabloids,and by the 21st century there werefake news websiteswhich spread hoaxes viasocial networkingwebsites (in addition to the use of email for a modern type ofchain letter).

Etymology

The EnglishphilologistRobert Nares(1753–1829) says that the wordhoaxwas coined in the late 18th century as a contraction of the verbhocus,which means "to cheat", "to impose upon"or (according toMerriam-Webster) "to befuddle often with drugged liquor."Hocusis a shortening of themagicincantationhocus pocus,whose origin is disputed.

Definition

Thomas Ady'sA candle in the dark...(1656) contains one of the earliest mentions ofhocus pocus,the origin of the wordhoax.

Robert Nares defined the wordhoaxas meaning "to cheat", dating fromThomas Ady's 1656 bookA candle in the dark, or a treatise on the nature of witches andwitchcraft.

The termhoaxis occasionally used in reference to urban legends and rumours, but thefolkloristJan Harold Brunvandargues that most of them lack evidence of deliberate creations of falsehood and are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes, so the term should be used for only those with a probable conscious attempt to deceive.As for the closely related termspractical jokeandprank,Brunvand states that although there are instances where they overlap,hoaxtends to indicate "relatively complex and large-scale fabrications" and includes deceptions that go beyond the merely playful and "cause material loss or harm to the victim."

According to Professor Lynda Walsh of theUniversity of Nevada, Reno,some hoaxes – such as theGreat Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814,labelled as a hoax by contemporary commentators – are financial in nature, and successful hoaxers – such asP. T. Barnum,whoseFiji mermaidcontributed to his wealth – often acquire monetary gain or fame through their fabrications, so the distinction betweenhoaxandfraudis not necessarily clear.Alex Boese, the creator of theMuseum of Hoaxes,states that the only distinction between them is the reaction of the public, because a fraud can be classified as a hoax when its method of acquiring financial gain creates a broad public impact or captures the imagination of the masses.

One of the earliest recorded media hoaxes is a fakealmanacpublished byJonathan Swiftunder the pseudonym ofIsaac Bickerstaffin 1708.Swift predicted the death ofJohn Partridge,one of the leading astrologers in England at that time, in the almanac and later issued anelegyon the day Partridge was supposed to have died. Partridge's reputation was damaged as a result and his astrological almanac was not published for the next six years.

It is possible to perpetrate a hoax by making only true statements using unfamiliar wording or context, such as in theDihydrogen monoxide hoax.Political hoaxes are sometimes motivated by the desire to ridicule or besmirch opposing politicians orpolitical institutions,often before elections.

A hoax differs from amagictrick or from fiction (books, film, theatre, radio, television, etc.) in that the audience is unaware of being deceived, whereas in watching a magician perform an illusion the audience expects to be tricked.

A hoax is often intended as a practical joke or to cause embarrassment, or to provoke social or political change by raising people's awareness of something. It can also emerge from a marketing or advertising purpose. For example, to market aromantic comedyfilm, a director staged a phony "incident" during a supposed wedding, which showed a bride and preacher getting knocked into a pool by a clumsy fall from a best man.A resulting video clip ofChloe and Keith's Weddingwas uploaded to YouTube and was viewed by over 30 million people and the couple was interviewed by numerous talk shows.Viewers were deluded into thinking that it was an authentic clip of a real accident at a real wedding; but a story inUSA Todayin 2009 revealed it was a hoax.

Great Moon Hoax

Governments sometimes spread false information to facilitate their objectives, such as going to war. These often come under the heading of black propaganda. There is often a mixture of outright hoax andsuppression and management of informationto give the desired impression. In wartime and times of international tension rumours abound, some of which may be deliberate hoaxes.

Examples of politics-related hoaxes:

• Belgiumis a country with aFlemish-speaking region and a French-speaking region. In 2006, French-speaking television channelRTBFinterrupted programming witha spoof reportclaiming that the country had split in two and theroyal familyhad fled.
• On 13 March 2010, theImeditelevision station inGeorgiabroadcasta false announcementthat Russia had invaded Georgia.

Psychologist Peter Hancock has identified six steps which characterise a truly successful hoax:

• Identify a constituency – a person or group of people who, for reasons such as piety or patriotism, or greed, will truly care about your creation.
• Identify a particular dream which will make your hoax appeal to your constituency.
• Create an appealing but "under-specified" hoax, with ambiguities
• Have your creation discovered.
• Find at least one champion who will actively support your hoax.
• Make people care, either positively or negatively – the ambiguities encourage interest and debate

Types

Graphic showing differences betweenmisinformation,disinformation,and hoax, presented forWikimedia Research(2015)

Hoaxes vary widely in their processes of creation, propagation, and entrenchment over time. Examples include:

• Academic hoaxes:
  • TheSokal affair
  • TheGrievance studies affair
• Art-world hoaxes:
  • The "Bruno Hat" art hoax, arranged in London in July 1929, involved staging a convincing public exhibition of paintings by an imaginary reclusive artist, Bruno Hat. All the perpetrators were well-educated and did not intend a fraud, as the newspapers were informed the next day. Those involved includedBrian Howard,Evelyn Waugh,Bryan Guinness,John BantingandTom Mitford
  • Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960:a 1998 art world hoax, byWilliam Boyd
  • Disumbrationism:a modern art hoax
  • Pierre Brassau:exposing art critics to "modern paintings" made by a chimpanzee
  • Ads forJean Freeman Galleryappeared in "Art in America"in 1970, but theart galleryand its address did not exist. It turned out to be aperformance arthoaxlater covered in news outletsThe New York Timesand "Today"
  • Spectra: A Book of Poetic Experiments:a modernist poetry hoax
  • Ern Malley,the popular but fictitious Australian poet
• Apocryphalclaims that originate as a hoax gain widespread belief among members of a culture or organisation, become entrenched as persons who believe it repeat it ingood faithto others, and continue to command that belief after the hoax's originators have died or departed
• Computervirus hoaxesbecame widespread asvirusesthemselves began to spread. A typical hoax is an email message warning recipients of a non-existent threat, usually forging quotes supposedly from authorities such asMicrosoftandIBM.In most cases thepayloadis an exhortation to distribute the message to everyone in the recipient'saddress book.Thus the e-mail "warning" is itself the "virus." Sometimes the hoax is more harmful, e.g., telling the recipient to seek a particularfile(usually in aMicrosoft Windowsoperating system); if the file is found, the computer is deemed to be infected unless it is deleted. In reality the file is one required by the operating system for correct functioning of the computer.
• Criminal hoax admissions, such as the case of John Samuel Humble, also known asWearside Jack.Criminal hoax admissions divert time and money of police investigations with communications purporting to come from the actual criminal. Once caught, hoaxers are charged under criminal codes such asperverting the course of justiceandwasting police time.
• Factoids
• Hoaxes formed by making minor or gradually increasing changes to a warning or other claims widely circulated for legitimate purposes
• Hoax of exposureis a semi-comical or privatesting operation.It usually encourages people to act foolishly or credulously by falling for patent nonsense that the hoaxer deliberately presents as reality. A related activity isculture jamming.
• Hoax news
• Hoaxes perpetrated by "scare tactics" appealing to the audience's subjectively rational belief that the expected cost of not believing the hoax (the cost if its assertions are true times the likelihood of their truth) outweighs the expected cost of believing the hoax (cost if false times likelihood of falsity), such as claims that a non-malicious but unfamiliar program on one's computer ismalware
• Hoaxes perpetrated on occasions when their initiation is considered socially appropriate, such asApril Fools' Day
• Humbugs
• Internet hoaxes became more common after the start of social media. Some websites have been used to hoax millions of people on the Web
• Paleoanthropological hoaxes, anthropologists were taken in by the "Piltdown Mandiscovery "that was widely believed from 1913 to 1953
• Protest hoaxes. Members of social movements and other political activists have often used hoaxes in order to draw attention to causes and undermine their opponents.
• Religious hoaxes
• UFO hoaxes
• Urban legendsand rumours with a probable conscious attempt to deceive

Hoax news

Main article:Fake news

Hoax news (also referred to as fake news) is a news report containing facts that are either inaccurate or false but which are presented as genuine.A hoax news report conveys ahalf-truthused deliberately to mislead the public.

Hoax may serve the goal of propaganda ordisinformation– using social media to driveweb trafficand amplify their effect.Unlikenews satire,fake news websites seek to mislead, rather than entertain, readers for financial or political gain.

Hoax news is usually released with the intention of misleading to injure an organisation, individual, or person, and/or benefit financially or politically, sometimes utilising sensationalist, deceptive, or simply invented headlines to maximise readership. Likewise, clickbait reports and articles from this operation gain advertisement revenue.

See also

• Wikipedia:Hoax– Wikipedia content guidelinePages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets,an article about hoaxes on Wikipedia.
• Conspiracy theory– Attributing events to less-probable plots
• Counterfeit– Making a copy or imitation which is represented as the original
• Deception– Causing someone to believe something that is not true
• Email spoofing– Creating email spam or phishing messages with a forged sender identity or address
• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds– 1841 book by Charles Mackay
• Fake memoir– Type of literary forgery
• Fake news website– Website that deliberately publishes hoaxes and disinformation
• False document– Technique employed to create verisimilitude in a work of fiction
• Fictitious entry– Deliberately incorrect entry in a reference work
• Forgery– Process of making, adapting, or imitating objects to deceive
• Half-truth– Deceptive statement
• Impostor– List of people acting under false identityPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• List of hoaxes
• Literary forgery– Literary work which is deliberately misattributed to a historical or invented author
• Media manipulation– Techniques in which partisans create an image that favours their interests
• Musical hoax– Intentionally misattributed music
• Post-truth politics– Political culture where facts are considered irrelevant
• Tall tale– Story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual
• Virus hoax– Message warning of a non-existent computer virus
• Website spoofing– Creating a website, as a hoax, with the intention of misleading readers

Further reading

• MacDougall, Curtis D.(1958) [1940]Hoaxes.[revised ed.] New York: Dover
• Young, Kevin (2017).Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News.Graywolf Press.ISBN978-1555977917.

External links

• The Culture Jammer's Encyclopedia
• Snopes – Urban Legends Reference Pages
• The Greatest Hoaxes of All TimeArchived24 December 2011 at theWayback Machine– slideshow byLife magazine
• "What's All This Hoax Stuff, Anyhow?" (Bob Pease article onElectronic Designwebsite)Archived11 April 2014 at theWayback Machine
• Chloe and Keith's Wedding hoax– link to video and commentary atUSA Today
• Leyendas UrbanasArchived18 September 2018 at theWayback Machine– Urban Legends and Hoaxes in Spanish