In interviews last year, Te'o spoke about the personal obstacles and tragedies he'd overcome on his way to football excellence — most notably the deaths of his beloved grandmother and his girlfriend and love of his life, Lennay Kekua, within the same day. Te'o talked about the pain of losing both so close to him, as well as Kekua's emotional struggle — and finally losing battle — with leukemia. Though Te'o never met Kekua, the pair communicated mainly through e-mails and text messages.
Information is contradictory and details remain murky: Was Te'o in on the hoax, capitalizing on a crowd-pleasing sympathetic rags-to-riches story? Or was he himself the victim of a cruel hoax by someone sharing her (or his) fictional but emotionally moving life story? Or does the truth lie somewhere in between?
There are of course many different types of hoaxes. For example author James Frey wrote a 2003 novel about drug addiction recovery, claiming it was a memoir; homeowners in Amityville, N.Y., created a hoax in 1977 by claiming that their house was haunted by demons; and in 1996 physicist Alan Sokal submitted a gibberish article that was accepted and published in "Social Text," a respected cultural studies journal.
A hoax that costs money, embarrassment, or inconvenience may be merely a nuisance. But some of the most damaging and outrageous hoaxes are those that manipulate people's emotions and outrage the world. Here are a few of the most outlandish.
Flight of the Balloon Boy
In 2009 a 6-year-old boy named Falcon Heene was said to be in grave danger as he floated through Colorado skies in a silvery weather balloon created by his inventor father. His family claimed that he had climbed aboard the homemade balloon and launched, triggering a nationwide police search and rescue mission. It turned out that Heene, who became known as balloon boy, was in fact safe at home, and the family was suspected of staging the event in hopes of getting a reality TV show.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Perhaps the most malicious religious hoax in history, "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" is a book supposedly revealing a secret Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. It first appeared in Russia in 1905, and though the book has been completely discredited as a forgery, it is still in print and remains widely circulated. Many people have endorsed this religious hoax, including actor Mel Gibson, Adolf Hitler, and automaker Henry Ford, who in 1920 paid to have a half-million copies of the book published.
The Tawana Brawley Attack
In 1987 America was riveted by the tragic news story of a young black girl named Tawana Brawley, who said she had been gang-raped by six white men, including several police officers. Rev. Al Sharpton and others fanned racial tensions and accused police of a cover-up. The following year, after an extensive investigation (and revelations about contradictions in Brawley's story), a grand jury concluded that the girl had hoaxed the incident. A New York prosecutor successfully sued both Brawley and Sharpton for defamation in a case whose racial legacy remains today.
The Innocence of Muslims
The trailer for the 2012 film "Innocence of Muslims" led to riots over its depiction of the prophet Muhammad as a womanizer, child molester and criminal. Several Americans were killed in protests linked to the film. To date it's not clear that the finished film actually exists, though a trailer for it does (it appeared on YouTube, sparking the riots). The producer hoaxed the actors and crew, later dubbing inflammatory lines that insulted Islam over their real dialogue. Whether or not the infamous anti-Muslim film exists, many around the world were led to believe it did, and people died because of it.
Read more at Discovery News
No comments:
Post a Comment