Have you ever fell for an Internet Hoax?

[the-void]

Have you ever fallen for an Internet Hoax?

I have. It was 2000 and I received an email about Bonzai kittens. The email was asking me to sign up to a petition to stop this barbaric art.

http://www.petitiononline.com/bnzaikat/petition.html

Personally I was outraged at what appeared to be a website that promoted animal cruelty for commercial gain. I signed up to petition in a flash and I remember actually writing letters to various organisations to have them shut down this website. (A mirror of the original site can be found below)

http://www.shorty.com/bonsaikitten/index.html

The original website appeared to be selling the ancient art of Bonsai Kittens. They claimed they were taking kittens and putting them into ever increasing glass jars, thereby moulding the kitten into the shape of the jar. Basically turning the cat into an ornament.

There was no indication on the original website that this was a hoax. Enough people complained that the FBI investigated the owners at MIT and found that they were not in fact harming any kittens and nor were they actually selling any glass jars to put kittens in. It turned out that it was an elaborate hoax.

Unfortunately the website did get shut down in the end. I was very relived when I discovered that it turned out to be a hoax. I thought that the joke was in very poor taste. However, I still think it is a travesty that they had to shut the site down. Whatever happened to freedom of speech.

After this incident I learnt to take most things you read on the Internet with a large pinch of salt.

 

[the-void]

How on earth did you think that was real? Really? It's not like even the website was taking itself seriously.

Human nature I believe. Once people get the bit between their teeth they become blinded to the facts. All I saw was kittens being put into jars and that was enough for me to ignore everything else on the website.

The heart often overrides the head.

 

[the-void]

jesus, there are waaaay too many thread titles with completely incorrect grammar.

EDIT: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=9640579&postcount=1

 

[the-void]

if you are stupid enough to fall for any internet hoax then you deserve to be taken to the cleaners.

419 scams for example rely on western greed to succeed. people want to get rich despite most of these scams involving defrauding poor african nations.

Surely 419 scams only exist because of African greed, no?

 

[the-void]

No. If no-one ever fell for them, the scammers would go and do something else.

It's because of the western greed of getting a lot of money for effectively nothing that the scams work.

The people being scammed are victims of a crime by African Nigerians, lets not loose sight of that before you start blaming westerners for it.

You might as say if people wasn't so greedy and didn't buy expensive watches and have expensive phones they wouldn't get mugged for them. The mugger would go and do something else.