Comments on: Fake celebrity pranks New York City in social experiment caught on video

By: Juan Navarro

Juan Navarro — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 17:10:00 +0000

Guh… proof of the brain washing people have done to themselves, believing in something so insubstantial as Celebrity and how willing people are to make a jump and assume something not there. It reflect the utter stupidity that reigns out there…

By: Erin Conrad

Erin Conrad — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 07:59:00 +0000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=92nBF9qLr1w#t=300s

By: x jeremy jarratt

x jeremy jarratt — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 04:41:00 +0000

Why? Why do we worship celebrities like we do? They have become the new gods of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But i have yet to see one give birth to his own sister-slash-grandchild through his damn forehead!!!
Also, what’s with multiple people seeming fairly convinced they know him from some Spiderman joint? Very strange!

By: Coal Miki-Restall

Coal Miki-Restall — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 03:34:00 +0000

Adam and Joe did this in Tokyo about a decade ago (it was in episode 1 of Adam & Joe Go Tokyo I believe), with pretty much the same results. Funnily, it was put down to being a local phenomena.

By: Margaret Picky

Margaret Picky — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 00:20:00 +0000

Eartha Kitt died in 2008. I saw her just a few months before at Cafe’ Carlyle. She was very nice and mingled with the audience after the show.

By: GlenBlank

GlenBlank — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 23:48:00 +0000

Here in LA, fooling people into thinking you’re a celebrity is something of a contact sport.

Of course, most of the people playing that game here don’t post YouTube videos confessing to the hoax. :-)

By: chaopoiesis

chaopoiesis — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 23:06:00 +0000

One could found entire political parties on this proposition.

By: danimagoo

danimagoo — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 22:41:00 +0000

More impressed than I am now?

By: greebo

greebo — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 22:36:00 +0000

But what if the whole video itself is fake, and the real social experiment is about the shocked reaction it’s getting across the internet from everyone remarking how gullible the people in the video are? How will we feel then?

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 21:48:00 +0000

My friend who works as a celebrity minder at the film festival here rated Tim Curry as very nice and completely not self-important. High marks also for Eartha Kitt and Carol Channing. Sean Connery was rated as a five-star asshole.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 21:33:00 +0000

Reminds me of the stories of people waiting in lines in the Soviet Union without knowing what they were waiting for. They saw a line outside a store and assumed a scarce product was available.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 20:38:00 +0000

I once crossed paths with Bob Hope in the New Orleans Hyatt. I was panicked that he’d say hello to me, because even though his face was completely familiar, I just couldn’t place him. I thought he must be an old friend or a relative. I was even preparing my excuses. Then he said something to his companion, and that voice ID’d him in an instant. Funny how you forget that the people on the tube may also exist in real life.

By: BombBlastLightingWaltz

BombBlastLightingWaltz — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 19:50:00 +0000

Crows like (people) bright and shiny things. They steal them if they can.

By: billstewart

billstewart — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 19:38:00 +0000

Those women whose name starts with K* aren’t any different – they became celebrities by telling the people they were celebrities and acting like celebrities in public, not by having actually done anything noteworthy.

No reason you can’t be famous for 15 minutes yourself!

(*I don’t write out their full name, because any time you use it in public, they win again…)

By: Randy

Randy — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 19:24:00 +0000

The people are essentially using him to try to gain minor fame for themselves. Their hope is that they may be in a publication photo with him or briefly on TV with him. Or by having personal photos of themselves with someone famous gives them a certain amount of celebrity among their friends. The experiment is as much or more about peoples desire for fame themselves, than it is about their interest in the fame of someone else.

By: itsgene

itsgene — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 18:44:00 +0000

I tried this way back in the late 1980s. A friend had taken some b&w headshots of me when I thought I wanted to get into radio; I took a stack down to the Air & Space Museum with my friend, and ended up signing a dozen or so for tourists who assumed I was someone famous.

By: Boundegar

Boundegar — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 18:42:00 +0000

I went to college in Manhattan, and in four years bumped into a few celebrities just out for a walk. It’s just the city’s scenic charm.

By: biketom

biketom — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 18:34:00 +0000

Another guy did this first: he even got groupies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Ko6Xfa84w&feature=related

By: show me

show me — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 18:29:00 +0000

Tim Curry is an awesome talent and seems like he would be a great dude.

By: Thad Boyd

Thad Boyd — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 18:24:00 +0000

Guess it’s all context — Tim Curry once walked past me on Broadway. I gave him a grin and a nod but wasn’t going to bother him; I don’t remember anyone else really reacting to him either. And this is, of course, in a place where he would certainly have been recognized (Spamalot was running at the time and he was presumably on the way to work).

By: bolamig

bolamig — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 18:20:00 +0000

Many people underestimate the power of putting makeup on men.

By: Loafer

Loafer — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:48:00 +0000

I think that’s his buddies causing a stir to garner attention
And yes it’s fake… isn’t that the whole point ?

By: Loafer

Loafer — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:47:00 +0000

I do hate to use the word, but fuck me, people are retarded

By: Steve White

Steve White — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:41:00 +0000

People are stupid, but generally nice.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:38:00 +0000

At the beginning of the celebrity video, a crowd has already formed outside the entrance, they cheer his exit and he acknowledges them. Why? If a celebrity was spontaneously leaving it would take a while to get people’s attention. A lot of the photographers seem like the general public. It’s as they were primed for his exit which makes the experiment seem fake. A better approach would have been to start by emerging from an alley or side street and see how long it takes for people to notice.

By: anansi133

anansi133 — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:33:00 +0000

One time I saw some pigeons looking for a handout, so I mimed the motion of throwing food at them. They went pecking for the imaginary food on the ground, and other birds saw that and flew in to check it out. By the time I got tired and gave up there were hundreds of birds swarming the street. I still like to imagine that humans are usually smarter than this, but it’s good to check once in a while.

By: ReverendFaux

ReverendFaux — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:31:00 +0000

I actually pulled a stunt like this with my friend in Downtown Disney around 2007! He simply wore a tuxedo while two of us (me and an additional friend) simply walked close to him. We didn’t have near the showmanship Brett here did, even though a few people stopped and told him things like “I love your movies” and another of “We saw you on stage last night, you were great”. We didn’t think to tape it, which is a s shame because I think Mr. Cohen hear would chuckle from it. It’s really interesting to see people flocking to someone just because they look important, and it shows this guy is creative and funny in a non-menacing way (something rather uncommon right now) while in public. Good work, dude!