Look Smart Trivia: Hoaxes
10This April Fool’s Day, let’s all remember just how freaking difficult it used to be to pull off a good hoax. First you had to come up with a halfway plausible idea, and assemble something like evidence. Then you had to fool skeptical gatekeepers like news editors and professors before your hoax would ever reach the gullible public. Now, no matter what absolutely risible garbage you throw up on the Internet, you can assemble a community of believers. Kinda takes the fun out of it, huh? Anyway, here are five glimpses from the Golden Age of Hoaxery (i.e., all of human history until roughly now). Name all five of these affaires d’bullshit and you’ll win a bonafide $5 Meh coupon code. Insert signoff catchphrase here!
There were a lot of really good guesses in our National Parks & Monuments quiz last Friday, but it took until Saturday morning for @michellea to name them all. Bravo! I was hoping the trees in #5 (aspens) would be a clue:
- Great Smoky Mountains National Park
- White Sands National Monument
- Everglades National park
- Dinosaur National Monument
- Rocky Mountains National Park
- 8 comments, 33 replies
- Comment
1 Fritz Kreisler The front-page headline in the New York Times on 8 February 1935 rang down the curtain on one of the longest-running musical hoaxes in history. Years before most of his fellow violinists had rediscovered the pre-Classical repertoire, Fritz Kreisler had been in the habit of featuring a group of short pieces by seventeenth and eighteenth-century composers in his recitals. Critics and even a few scholars duly applauded his modest contribution to the early music revival. Little did they suspect that more than a dozen of the pieces by sundry ‘old masters’ that Kreisler had popularized over the years had been penned by the great violinist himself.
2: Buckwheat: “In 1990 a supermarket bagger named Bill English appeared on ABC’s 20/20 claiming to be ‘Buckwheat’ from the classic 'Our Gang”/“Little Rascals’ shorts. Problem? The actual Buckwheat had died 10 years prior. Watch as Bill’s O’tay-ness is called into question.”
Called in fake game scores to New York City newspapers in 1941 for colleges that didn’t exist
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/sports/ncaafootball/the-41-season-at-plainfield-teachers-college-when-every-play-was-a-fake.html
4 Alan David Sokal - Created a fake philosophy thesis criticizing postmodernism, which was take seriously while entirely false.
Alan David Sokal is a professor of mathematics at University College London and professor of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. To the general public he is best known for his criticism of postmodernism, resulting in the Sokal affair in 1996.
5 . DJ Jean Shepherd
Created a fake book I, Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing at the top of the best seller list by making up a title and having callers request it. DJ Jean Shepherd hated that bestseller lists were based on sales and also requests for books. He urged listeners to request a book that did not exist. It shot to number #1 and was eventually published fictional
https://www.abebooks.com/books/jokes-hoaxes-thomas-chatterton/literary-fraud.shtml
@tedesj That was a lot of work to basically repeat what was already said.
@cinoclav @tedesj I liked the added details.
@cinoclav @sammydog01 @tedesj you might also be the winner, if spelling matters. Thanks for all the extra effort!
Fritz Keisler
Bill English, a man who claimed to be the actor that portrayed buckwheat on the little rascals
Plainfield Teachers College didn’t exist
Alan Sokal deliberately submitted an article filled with nonsense to test a journal’s credibility
Jean Shepard his listeners request a book that didn’t exist, it became number one the best sellers list.
@Brandon313 I think you nailed it! Do you live in Arizona by any chance?
@sammydog01 No, I’m in Michigan. I just happened to remember the 20/20 episode with Bill English from 1990, who was from Arizona if I remember correctly.
@Brandon313 Definitely correct, congrats, but you may want to clarify the book in #5. In case anyone is wondering why the name is familiar, Jean Shepherd is the author and narrator of A Christmas Story.
@cinoclav oops, the book in 5 is I, Libertine
@Brandon313 @cinoclav I couldn’t get #2. I think I did explore the fake Buckwheat and just didn’t scroll through the video. Brandon, I don’t know on which side of the college football spectrum your loyalties lie, but I thought it humorous that there’s a Fritz Kreisler who’s not Fritz Crisler!
@cinoclav @lehigh apparently Fritz Crisler was nicknamed Fritz after Fritz Kreisler
I’m a loser.
@Barney Yep. You did get Rocky Mountains Park first though. You just missed the sand thing.
@Barney @sammydog01 But https://www.nps.gov/brca/learn/nature/quakingaspen.htm !!
@Barney @lehigh Looks like quaking aspen grow all over the north- including Acadia National Park.
Congrats @michellea!
#2: https://boingboing.net/2017/05/25/the-great-buckwheat-hoax.html
I only know number 2
@Brandon313 Funny, I know 1, 3, and 5.
@Brandon313 @cinoclav I got 1, 3, and 5 too.
@Brandon313 @sammydog01 I’m aware of the checkout urban legend, but I’m not sure that qualifies as an actual hoax.
@Brandon313 @cinoclav @sammydog01 - I am missing 2 and 4 as well. 4 looks kind of familiar.
@cinoclav @sammydog01 It’s not what the man’s doing, but who he is.
@Brandon313 Ooh, you know something I don’t. Awesome! 1, 3, and 5 are all easy searches.
LEGOS! EGGOS! STRATEGO! AWESOME!
@Brandon313 @cinoclav @sammydog01
Tell me this much
Might #4 be a French Horn player?
If so, then I know who is it, and revere the prank. And the prankster. And still have … (Hmm, what shall I call it) … My “local record” of said prank. Somewhere stored away.
But, in that case, this pix is a somewhat unfair photo. He was much younger then. I think, visibly so.
If I’m right …
I didn’t have to look this up. I remember.
If I’m wrong, which would be typical … it’s habitual.
My UID says it all.
@Brandon313 I think that @djslack has everything but #2 might be wrong- you can probably swoop in and take the prize. (We do that here- it’s fine.)
@f00l I’m intrigued by your thought on #4 (right or not
) Who did you think it was and what is your “local record”?
@mehcuda67
The “local record” was the original publication. Which became a classic.
The fictional “Sidd Finch”.
Yogi master, French Horn player, and meditative possessor of “the art of the pitch”.
Created by the mind of George Plimpton.
With help from the NY Mets who had great fun with it. And from Sports Illustrated..
One of the greatest April Fools jests ever.
https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/10/15/curious-case-sidd-finch
(collect the first letter of each word on the statement above and string them together)
(This article originally ran in the April 1, 1985 issue.)
…
People wanted a little brightness during some tough years. And … This article gave it to them. For a few hours, they - we - believed. Or asked it if were even possible.
Could it be … ?
They - we - wanted it to be possible.
Read the article. It’s lovely.
Plimpton later turned it into a short book.
A short version of the entire event is here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidd_Finch
ESPN later did a short film tribute to the brief phenomenon.
People seem to remember it all with a kind of sweet and fond awe.
http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=12547809
April: confirmed. Fools: confirmed. Day: confirmed.
@f00l That’s a fantastic story!
And good on SI and the Mets for doing their part.
@mehcuda67
According to the ESPN short film, two major league team managers called the commissioner of baseball on the day the story hit the stands.
They totally bought the story (despite the April 1 1985 date on the magazine cover) and were worried sick that no hitter could ever hit a 168mph fastball.
Perhaps the story “worked” because SI had never done anything like that before.
Or because the guy - a schoolteacher - who acted the part of Finch in the photos was so very nice and loveable.
Or because the story itself was sweetness and light - and the Met players and managers who participated carried that angle also.
Anyway … For a few hours everyone seemed to believe. Or to hope to believe.
And after that, everyone seemed to just love the hoax.
The internet museum of hoaxes currently rates it as #9 in their list of April Fools pranks.
http://hoaxes.org/aprilfool/
April: confirmed. Fools: confirmed. Day: confirmed.
And just how does one display their ignorance to just @JasonToon without embarrassing themselves to all?
Asking for a friend.
@JanaS Your friend is required to display his or her ignorance to all of us. We do it after all.
No one else has, so I’ll try:
Fritz Kreisler, played his own compositions and attributed them to historical composers
Dayton-Hudson Hoax
Plainfield Teachers fictional football season
Alan Sokal, hoax paper author
I, Libertine, the hoax novel that actually came to be
@djslack Alan Sokal looks correct- nice job! Don’t know about 2 though.
@sammydog01 it was a reach. The closest I could find to a retail hoax from the 80’s. That photo may even be older than that.
@djslack I read up on the Sokal thing- pretty funny.