Hoax Busters

I've added a new link to the sidebar: HOAX BUSTERS DOT ORG. You'll find it on the sidebar under "Reference Sources".

Hoax Busters replaces the (now defunct) U. S. Department of Energy's "Hoaxbusters.ciac.org" website, which has been shut down.

I have always appreciated the DOE website, because they spotlighted my 15 minutes of Geek Fame.

Here's the story:

Around 1997, I received an email which was a spoof. It was called "Greeks Bearing Gifts", and warned Trojans against accepting gifts from Greeks. Yes, it was based on the Trojan Horse episode from the Trojan Wars (see: ILIAD) and suggested that if your city is besieged by Greeks and one day you wake up to find a huge Wooden Horse at the gates to your city, you should NOT take it into your city for fear that it will dump a shit-load of armed Geeks whose only goal is to "Rape, Pillage and Burn". (In that order, please.)

I thought this was high humor, and deserving of a more timely theme. Accordingly, I changed all references to "Greek" to "Geek", and emailed it to everyone I knew.

It came as a huge surprise when HoaxBusters.ciac.org featured this entirely innocent email as 'An Internet Hoax', and warned readers not to proliferate it by forwarding the mail to friends!

Today, the email is not considered a threat and probably doesn't even circulate among ... well, Geeks.

At the time, it was puerile and sophomoric, and I was amazed at the attention.

But I've always been just a little bit proud that, for a while, I made the United States Federal Government just a little bit uneasy.

In point of fact, there are still websites which carry the original text. One of them is here, if you really want to read it. (No, it's not my version; it's the original version which refers to GREEKS not GEEKS, but it's almost identical.)

When you're a Geek, it doesn't take much to stoke the old ego.

Besides, today you can find the "Geeks Bearing Gifts" reference on many legitimate websites.

Snopes dot com even includes the phrase ... although they no longer carry the original text of the email (but they once did!)
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UPDATE: October 14, 2008
I received a very polite email from the good folks at HoaxBusters.com correcting my misinformed impression:

Hi Jerry,

I'm writing in reference the following statement from your blog:

"Hoax Busters replaces the (now defunct) U. S. Department of Energy's "Hoaxbusters.ciac.org" website, which has been shut down."

I appreciate the plug, and the link, but I want to clear up one thing. We are not replacing the CIAC site. We have been around since 1999, and are in no way connected with CIAC or any governmental agency. We are completely independent, and beholden to no one.

Now, if we could replace the CIAC site as a one-stop debunking source, that would be a good thing. With the demise of the CIAC site, there are only three or four really good debunking sites left (that includes ours, of course).

Again, thanks for the the plug.

Jim


Who ya gonna call?
*Hoax Busters*
http://www.hoaxbusters.org/

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