Boing Boing » hoax

Shellfail hoaxers send hoax legal threat. I fall for it.

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 19:55:23 +0000

Update: [5 minutes later]

OK, wait a second. It's a hoax.

Wainwright and Shore, the "PR Agency" that sent out this email, has only had a domain for a month. They've got virtually no Google footprint (just an Eventbrite listing for the hoax Shell event). The people who answer the phones are super-evasive.

Derp. I've been had.

~~Shell's PR department just sent me this:~~

Lawyers operating on behalf of Royal Dutch Shell plc. (Shell) are considering formal action against unknown activists who staged a counterfeit campaign launch event at the Seattle Space Needle.
The groups released a stream of social media content, with the defamatory hashtag #shellfail, which deliberately misrepresents the safety of Shell's drill rigs heading to the Arctic, and extensively violated Shell's intellectual property rights.
Shell is monitoring the spread of potentially defamatory material on the internet and reporters are advised to avoid publishing such material.

Yes, really. Shell is sending journalists emails containing veiled legal threats in case they should dare to report on a hashtag.
Be sure to check out the ArcticReady site, whose existence I would never have discovered had Shell's PR pros not made a point of telling me about it.

~~I just called the number in the press release (which also appears on the website of Wainwright and Shore, a PR agency) and confirmed that this was indeed sent on Shell's behalf to journalists.~~

Hoax campus advertisement offers students €100 to pretend to be pro-ACTA demonstrators

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:36:26 +0000

@jimmy_pirat (a Twitter account with only one post) snapped a blurrycam picture of a campus employment ad that sought students to pretend to be pro-ACTA and hold up photogenic signs, paying €100 for two hours' work. The recruitment agency named in the ad disavows any involvement with it, and has threatened to sue whomever posted it. I wonder who the hoaxter was?

Own a piece of the Balloon Boy saucer

David Pescovitz — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 11:58:36 +0000

Remember the balloon boy hoax of 2009? Richard and Mayumi Heene claimed their 6-year-old son had floated away in the saucer-shaped contraption only to later be revealed hoaxsters trying to land a reality TV show. Soon, you'll be able to own a piece of the prank. Michael Fruitman of Mike's Stadium Sportcscards in Denver, Colorado paid Heene's attorney $2500 for the saucer at auction. He's putting it on display for a bit before chopping it up for "souvenirs." "Balloon Boy Saucer To Go On Display In Colo. Store"