People have always enjoyed playing trick on others. Heck, we even have a day dedicated to it (April Fools’). With the advent of the internet, it has made it much easier to pull pranks and hoaxes on a much wider scale. Here we take a brief look at the history of internet hoaxes.
Supposedly, the first internet hoax happened back in 1988. An email was sent far and wide with the subject line stating that a ‘Really, Nasty Virus’ was on the way. This started a whole wave of ‘chain letters’ i.e. hoaxes sent by email.
Another notable example would be Bill Gates and his alleged $1000 dollar giveaway. This is a hoax that has seen many iterations of the years, with a similar idea still being shared around on Facebook.
Bill Gates giving away $5000 for a Facebook share. Source: Facebook
Then, as technology progressed, doctored photographs and images would often be published online complimenting fake news stories.
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- 2001 – Thought to be the original web hoax, this image was disseminated through emails, with many believing it had won the National Geographic picture award. Source: Wikipedia
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- Also 2001, this image was spread after 9/11 claiming that a tourist at the top of the World Trade Center managed to take a photo of the incoming jet.
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- 2004 – The skeleton of a giant human was supposedly discovered by an archaeological team.
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- 2011 – A spider, the ‘Angolian Witch Spider’ invading a home in Florida. It is alleged to feast on cats and dogs. Of course, the species does not exist
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- 2012 – This apocalyptic looking image apparently shows the Statue of Liberty amidst a huge storm from Hurricane Sandy.
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- 2014 – Fried Chicken Oreos were soon to be hitting supermarket shelves. However intriguing this might be, it is fake.
Today, fake news stories have become a common occurrence making it increasingly difficult to separate the fact from the fiction. This is what Web of Lies aims to discuss.