Hoax - Types of Hoaxes

Types of Hoaxes

Hoaxes vary widely in their processes of creation, propagation, and entrenchment over time. For example :

• List of Religion Related Hoaxes and Possible Hoaxes
• Hoaxes perpetrated on occasions when their initiation is considered socially appropriate, such as April Fools' Day
• Anthropologists were taken in by the "Piltdown Man" discovery that was widely believed from 1913 to 1953.
• Apocryphal claims that originate as a hoax, gain widespread belief among members of a culture or organization, become entrenched as persons who believe it repeat it in good faith to others, and continue to command that belief after the hoax's originators have died or departed
• The "Bruno Hat" art hoax arranged in London in July 1929 involved staging a convincing public exhibition of paintings by an imaginary reclusive artist, Bruno Hat. All the perpetrators were well-educated and did not intend a fraud, as the newspapers were informed the next day. Those involved included Brian Howard, Evelyn Waugh, Bryan Guinness, John Banting and Tom Mitford.
• Hoaxes formed by making minor or gradually increasing changes to a warning or other claim widely circulated for legitimate purposes
• Hoaxes perpetrated by "scare tactics" appealing to the audience's subjectively rational belief that the expected cost of not believing the hoax (the cost if its assertions are true times the likelihood of their truth) outweighs the expected cost of believing the hoax (cost if false times likelihood of falsity), such as claims that a non-malicious but unfamiliar program on one's computer is malware
• Some urban legends and rumors with a probable conscious attempt to deceive
• Humbugs
• Computer virus hoaxes became widespread as viruses themselves began to spread. A typical hoax is an email message warning recipients of a non-existent threat, usually quoting spurious authorities such as Microsoft and IBM. In most cases the payload is an exhortation to distribute the message to everyone in the recipient's address book. Sometimes the hoax is more harmful, e.g., telling the recipient to seek a particular file (usually in a Microsoft Windows operating system); if the file is found, the computer is deemed to be infected unless it is deleted. In reality the file is one required by the operating system for correct functioning of the computer.
• A hoax of exposure is a semi-comical or private sting operation. It usually encourages people to act foolishly or credulously by falling for patent nonsense that the hoaxer deliberately presents as reality. A related activity is culture jamming.
• Rodney Marks who describes himself as a corporate comedian, presents fake keynote speeches at business events. These speeches usually reveal the presenter as well informed about the conference and leading figures, but progressively the audience is lambasted until they recognize the comedy.