Tyrion Lannister has a spy in his cabinet. As Hand of the King, Tyrion knows that one member of King Joffrey’s small council is a traitor, leaking information to his conniving sister, Queen Regent Cersei Lannister. As there are three council members, the dwarf has three suspects. He tells each potential quisling a unique piece of information, so that when Cersei confronts Tyrion about one piece of supplanted intel, he can easily identify which cowardly councilman betrayed him.
By planting misinformation, Tyrion has successfully deployed a canary trap.21
This method of exposing the source of an information leak was coined by Tom Clancy in his novel Patriot Games. In espionage circles (real spies use it, too), it goes by the more mouthy catchphrase “barium meal test.”
Canary traps are also commonly dispatched by corporations that suspect an employee is leaking sensitive information to the press. The trap is set by sending what seems to be a mass corporate email to all employees, but each memo has slightly different information. When the missive is forwarded to and published by a reporter, the tattling tipster is easily exposed by the specific phrasing in the memo. The NBA, Apple, and Tesla are among companies caught using versions of this snitch-identification tactic.
Hollywood frequently deploys a similar technique. When movie studios need to share scripts with cast members, they will sometimes change a line or two in each version of the text. When a script is leaked, producers can track that specific copy back to its leaky source. Similarly, DVD movie screeners often contain personalized watermarks (either a name or some numeric identifier placed directly on the video) as a type of canary trap—one in which the trap itself is placed conspicuously, as a warning to filesharers.
The term itself likely derives from the bygone practice of sending canaries into coal mines, to test for the existence of dangerous gas. If the canary failed to return, the air was deemed unsafe.
SEE ALSO: HONEYPOT; HONEYTRAP; STEGANOGRAPHY
Canned heat—not to be confused with the band who performed “Going up the Country” at Woodstock—is the practice of blaring pretaped crowd noise through loudspeakers at live sporting events. The term tumbles down from professional wrestling, where recordings of jubilant cheering and chthonic booing are often blasted through an arena’s sound system. Like a live LAUGH TRACK, the crescendo acts as an audio cue for wrestling fans to react, which in turn helps producers direct specific storylines.
More controversially, use of canned heat has often been alleged at genuine sporting events, where a raucous crowd burst can disrupt player communication. Over the years, many professional teams—the Indianapolis Colts, the Boston Celtics, the Seattle Seahawks—have been accused of pumping fake crowd noise into their arenas and stadiums. Only the Atlanta Falcons have confessed to the practice.
Although canned heat breaks the rules, there are no regulations against manipulating the materials and structural elements of a stadium to amplify the acoustic reverberations. Canopies at CenturyLink Field in Seattle are notoriously touted as natural sonic amplifiers that can reflect crowd noise onto the playing field. The Seahawks’ so-called 12th man (a sort of CYBORG composed of raucous fans plus sonic architecture) set a Guinness World Record for crowd noise, at 137.6 decibels.
SEE ALSO: CLAPTER; CLAQUE; KAYFABE; LAUGH TRACK; SMARKS
Cannibal Holocaust was the first “found footage” horror movie and by far the genre’s most believable creation—and therefore its most disturbing. The 1980 film depicts anthropological documentarians in the Amazon who encounter an indigenous cannibalistic tribe. (Let your macabre mind wander from there.)
The film’s style was so realistic and gruesome that its Italian director was arrested and tried on charges of murder. Despite contracts stating they would essentially disappear for one year following its release, the actors had to come out from hiding to testify on the director’s behalf, swearing under oath that they had not, technically, perished in a snuff film, as depicted on-screen.
SEE ALSO: THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT; NACIREMA; TOFURKEY; WORK OF FICTION DISCLAIMER
Are you convinced that your husband has been replaced with a replica? If he is Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, then you might be onto something; otherwise, you likely suffer from the rare disorder known as Capgras delusion.
People with this affliction believe that someone close to them (usually a spouse, though occasionally a pet) is an impostor. The syndrome is sometimes associated with schizophrenia but can also afflict people who have no other mental illness.
The disorder is named after Joseph Capgras, a French psychiatrist who, in 1923, described the case of Madame M., who insisted that her family had been replaced by impostors. Though she did not suffer from paranoia (the belief that someone was “out to get her”), she surmised that her husband was eighty different doppelgangers.
Recent research has suggested that Capgras syndrome is something like the inverse of prosopagnosia, or the inability to recognize faces. Testing reveals that while those afflicted with prosopagnosia can’t recognize people, they do show an unconscious reaction to familiar faces, measured by a galvanic skin response. So, while people with prosopagnosia consciously can’t recognize faces but unconsciously can, patients with Capgras syndrome seem to suffer from the opposite: the inability to unconsciously have an emotional response to familiar faces.
Tony Rosato, a former SNL cast member who played Luigi in a television version of Super Mario Bros. 3, suffered from Capgras syndrome.
SEE ALSO: COTARD DELUSION; IMPOSTOR SYNDROME; PAUL IS DEAD; ROSENHAN EFFECT; TAMAGOTCHI EFFECT; TRUMAN SYNDROME
In October 1869, construction workers uncovered a ten-foot-tall “petrified man” while digging a well behind a barn in Cardiff, NY. As news spread, the owner of the land, William C. “Stub” Newell, conveniently began charging a quarter to individuals interested in seeing the giant. After two days, so many gawkers arrived that he bumped admission to a half-dollar.
Audiences were divided on whether the Cardiff Giant was a mummified man or an ancient statue. Respected paleontologists immediately dubbed it a HUMBUG, which did nothing to stem the flow of paying spectators to the farm. Recognizing its success in the country, a syndicate of men bought the giant and moved it to Syracuse, where even more gapers paid admission. With larger crowds came more debunking, but no one seemed to care. Even savvy observers became fervent fans, affectionately dubbing the giant “Old Hoaxy.”
As would eventually happen to any nineteenth-century object of questionable legitimacy, the attention of P. T. Barnum was finally piqued. The human-curiosity showman offered the syndicate $60,000 for a three-month lease of the colossus. When they turned him down, Barnum made his own plaster replica, putting it on display at his American Museum in New York. His “real” Cardiff Giant drew even bigger crowds than the original.
Barnum declared the original a fake. Of course, it was a fake (it was made from gypsum by Newell’s coconspirator cousin), but that did not stop its owners from suing Barnum. After a judge dismissed the case—experts assessed both giants were fraudulent—one of the annoyed owners reportedly said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” It’s a bizarre statement from someone peddling a counterfeit mummy, but as the phrase spread, Barnum reportedly grew jealous that he had not uttered it himself. And for a long time, the misquote was attributed to him, partially because he never denied saying it.
Phineas Taylor Barnum may have invented more phrases than anyone since Shakespeare. “Let’s get the show on the road,” “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” “Throw your hat in the ring,” “The greatest show on earth,” and “Siamese twins” are all Barnum coinages. But he was not the first to say of his audiences “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Rather, somewhat ironically, it’s what an exasperated foe said in reference to him.
SEE ALSO: BARNUM EFFECT; HUMBUGGERY; SMARKS
A catfish is a person who feigns an online identity, particularly in pursuit of romance. Most often, the term is used in its verb form, meaning to lure someone into an amorous relationship by adopting a fictional internet persona. Its eponym is a 2010 documentary that became a popular MTV series.
The show follows a formula. An episode commences with its two winsome hosts, Nev Schulman and Max Joseph, being contacted by a “hopeful”—a person who suspects their internet amour might be fake. (As detailed in a Vulture story, “Here’s How MTV’s Catfish Actually Works,” more often than not, the catfish is actually the one who first contacts MTV.22) In the second act, the cybersleuths get to work on the case, digging around for clues on social media, querying Spokeo for public records, and using Google Reverse Image Search like it is an elite forensic tool from CSI. When all the fishy findings are compiled—a suspicious social graph connection, a dubious profile with no followers—Nev and Max reveal their dossier to the hopeful. In the final act, everyone confronts the catfish. At the big reveal of their online sweetie, the hopeful either laughs, cries, shrugs, screams, sulks, or, least likely, swoons. (In one episode from season two, a woman believes her virtual paramour is the rapper Bow Wow, but she is very, very much mistaken.)
The show’s most astonishing revelation initially seemed to be the sheer number of catfishers roaming the internet looking for prey. (A mix of motives constitute their deviousness—misplaced romantic desires, sexual identities, malevolent trolling, loneliness, revenge, and, very often, crippling body dysmorphia.) But as you continue watching episodes, a more ponderous data point emerges: the staggering number of people willing to fall for a catfish. In case after case, even a small bit of investigative work would have uncovered an uncouth catfish and saved the victim from undue emotional stress, but the hopefuls so often allow themselves to fall victim to the scheme. This interplay between the exploited and the exploiter, plus the moral questions that come with such imposture, is the massive subtext of the show.
SEE ALSO: HONEYTRAP; INTERNET TROLLS; SOCKPUPPET; TEOING
The celebrity sex tape is a deceptive species. It can beguile through simple MIMICRY (those videos that purport to contain a celebrity but subvert with doppelgangers) or with metaphysical mind play (if a sex tape is rumored, but no one wanks to it, did it happen?).23 But one type of deception is more devious than all others: The tape that presents itself as a gonzo bootleg but was knowingly produced for mass distribution to make its participants famous.
The three most notorious celebrity sex tapes—those showcasing the talents of Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, and Pamela Anderson—have all been accused of this bodacious deceit. In all three cases, rumors persist that the celebutante was somehow implicated in the distribution of their own smut. This is not an unreasonable conclusion—the tapes do seem to be the products of narcissists who seek fame by any means. Paris Hilton’s sex tape suspiciously dropped only three weeks before the premiere of her new reality show, The Simple Life. And if not for Kim’s leaked skin flick, a “Kardashian” might today be mistaken for the name of a sandwich. However, in these three cases, subterfuge is (most likely) not at play. It appears that none of these women intentionally leaked their tawdry tapes, as we might be prone to believe, and all three reportedly tried to block the distribution of their eponymous videos.
When Paris Hilton learned that her letchy beau, Rick Salomon, was selling their sex tape, she sued for $30 million but was awarded only $400,000 by the court. She claims to have received nothing from the infamous night-vision tape that became 1 Night in Paris, despite selling more than a million copies. Even if she did not want the tape released, Hilton appears keenly aware of an audience in the video. “You’re, like, obsessed,” she says in flagrante delicto. “You always film me.” She seems to be speaking to you, the viewer, as much as to her scuzzy screen collaborator.
Kim Kardashian was also a minor Hollywood figure when her tape surfaced. She had made a few media appearances as the BFF/closet organizer of Hilton, but her tape with singer Ray J (filmed in Cabo on her twenty-third birthday in 2002) was a surprise when it was announced in 2007. She sued Vivid Entertainment to stop the release of Kim Kardashian, Superstar, but settled out of court for $5 million. Months later, E! announced its new reality series, Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The sex tape made more than $50 million for Vivid.
Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee also initially tried to halt distribution of their magnum opus but reportedly signed a deal when they realized they might as well profit from what they cannot stop.24
Today, when the origin of a new sex tape is publicly debated, the word “leaked” is inevitably placed in ironic quotes, to suggest a furtive push by the wannabe celeb into the marketplace. Though Paris, Kim, and Pam tried to quash their sex tapes (at least initially), many D-List celebs have unabashedly created scripted porn that feigns gonzo provenance. Tom Sizemore, for instance, released his “personal archive of pure hardcore crazy fun” on DVD in 2005. A year later, Dustin Diamond dropped Screeched: Saved by the Smell on an unwanting public. Even Tonya Harding pushed a sex tape, which was marketed as a leaked wedding night video but was actually choreographed in costume with her husband. Shame on them all! What has the world come to when you can’t trust a sex tape?
SEE ALSO: HONEYTRAP; PORNOGRAPHY; REALDOLL; STREISAND EFFECT
Incredibly, the Chewbacca Defense is a legal strategy proposed by the loutish animated sitcom South Park.
In an episode from the second season, which aired four days after the O. J. Simpson murder trial verdict, an animated Johnnie Cochran delivers a haranguing closing argument about how it “makes no sense” that Chewbacca would live on the planet Endor “with a bunch of two-foot-tall Ewoks.” Of course, he is right. (Don’t be daft. Chewie is a Wookiee from Kashyyyk.) No one in the courtroom contends otherwise, but Cochran prolongs his rant, undaunted by the lack of disputation. “If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit.” He finally concludes with trademark sophistry, “The defense rests.”
This is the Chewbacca Defense: a mix of prevaricating filibuster, lunatic troll logic, semantic nit-picking, derailing smoke screens, and vituperative shouting—or what debate tutors call “winning.” (The O. J. Simpson defense was a lucid wet dream for shitty high school debate coaches.)
The Chewbacca Defense coexists with many unique criminal defenses that originated in pop culture. Next is a collection of other examples.
SEE ALSO: AGNOTOLOGY; IF I DID IT; INTERNET TROLL; LOREM IPSUM; SOPHISTS
THE DEFENSE |
USED BY |
ACCUSED OF |
THE RATIONALE |
The Taxi Driver Defense |
John Hinckley Jr. |
the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan |
Jodie Foster made me do it! |
The Matrix Defense |
Lee Boyd Malvo |
the Beltway Sniper attacks |
I did it because we are trapped in the Matrix! |
The Subway Diet Defense |
Jared Fogle |
paying for sex with minors; possessing child porn |
That lousy Subway sandwich diet made me do it! |
The Twinkie Defense |
Dan White |
murdering Harvey Milk and George Moscone |
Junk food made me do it! |
The King Kong Defense |
Carl Lundström |
infringing copyright via The Pirate Bay |
A user “in the jungles of Cambodia” shared those files! |
The Evil Twin Defense |
Aaron Lucas |
sexual assault |
My twin with the same DNA did it! |
The Sleepwalking Defense |
Kenneth Parks (acquitted) |
murdering in-laws |
I was dreaming the whole time! |
The Urban Survival Defense |
Bernie Goetz (acquitted) |
shooting four black kids on a New York subway |
Those kids were trying to rob me! |
The Sergeant Schultz Defense |
Chris Christie (no legal charges) |
closing a bridge as political retribution |
“I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing!” |
The Chilean sea bass might be the most successful exercise in food rebranding of all time.25
Until 1977, this denizen of the deep sea went by a completely different name—toothfish. But when a Los Angeles seafood wholesaler discovered the obscure species residing around Antarctica, he set upon devising a more palatable moniker. After considering Pacific sea bass and South American sea bass, the fishmonger decided a hyperlocal epithet would garner the most attention. Thus, the Chilean sea bass was hatched, despite the fish being neither particularly Chilean (only a small portion comes from Chile) nor even a bass (toothfish is a cod!). Even the “sea” portion of its moniker is a partial misnomer, as much of the stock is now raised in fisheries.
After its rebranding, the fish went mostly unnoticed until 1990, when the New York Four Seasons finally added the dish to its snooty menu next to pan-seared filet mignon and poached lobster. By 2001, the luxurious white morsel had become Bon Appétit’s dish of the year—an estimable accomplishment for an unremarkable cod from Antarctica.
Chilean sea bass is far from the only seafood to prosper from successful rebranding. The regal orange roughy once went by the ignoble name slimehead. And more recently, the sea urchin has adopted its Japanese moniker, uni. Next are some other tasty foods that seem historically and geographically specific but whose origins belie their savvy branding.
SEE ALSO: FOREIGN BRANDING; FRANKENFOOD; SAMPURU; TOFURKEY
THE FOOD... |
SEEMS INVENTED IN... |
ACTUALLY INVENTED IN... |
Ciabatta |
The Renaissance? |
1982 in Verona, Italy |
Fortune Cookies |
Confucian China? |
early twentieth-century California |
Tiramisu |
Eighteenth-century Italy? |
1960s Italy; unknown until the 1980s |
Vichyssoise |
Nineteenth-century France? |
1917 at the Ritz-Carlton in New York City |
General Tso’s Chicken |
Qing Dynasty? |
1970s New York City |
Spaghetti & Meatballs |
A long time ago in Italy? |
1920s Little Italy, New York City |
Pasta Primavera |
1920s Italy? |
1977 at Le Cirque in New York City |
French Dip Sandwich |
Nineteenth-century Paris? |
1908, Los Angeles |
Fajitas |
Colonial Mexico? |
1970s southwest America |
Chicken Tikka Masala |
Precolonial India? |
1971 in Glasgow |
Apple Pie |
Colonial America? |
the Middle Ages, Netherlands |
Depending on which authenticator is counting, there are around thirty-five extant paintings by the great seventeenth-century master of light, Johannes Vermeer. Their scarcity makes his paintings among the most coveted objects in the world—so scarce that art historians reserve a certain adjective for precisely these types of cultish obsessions, which are not exactly beyond value, but are rather, as they say, priceless, which is to say, without price. Because the artworks are so infrequently bought and sold, the marketplace is unable to publicly access numerative value. But the bidding would start in the hundreds of millions.
Or you can buy one online for around a hundred bucks. Through numerous websites, you can custom-order your very own Vermeer, or whatever your bon vivant heart desires, straight from China. Classic to modern, da Vinci to Duchamp, it can be purchased online. You won’t even need to tread into the nefarious corners of the dark web, where assassins and ayahuasca fluctuate with bitcoin values. The worst you will have to endure is some transgressive web design, plus the queasy feeling that accompanies the shaky politics of Chinese labor production.26
About a month after placing your order, you will receive a high-quality painting, most likely with the return address of Dafen Village, a suburb of Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong. This province alone employs an estimated 8,000 artists. Some painters specialize in reproducing the classics—the Mona Lisa or Starry Night. Others do portraits of American celebrities or produce the generic art found in hotels and Wal-Mart. Dafen Village is an enormous art factory, producing an estimated 60 percent of the world’s oil paintings—that includes all the “real” paintings by Western artists.27
If buying a masterwork reproduction rings gauche to your delicate ears, you likely belong to a snooty class of aesthetes—the sort of person who would equate owning an ersatz Vermeer to finding a wife on RussianBrides.com. But consider all of the other luxury imitations that society has come to accept—costume jewelry, faux fur, artificial nails, KNOCKOFF HANDBAGS. Eventually, like those imitations, the meretricious aura of a fake Vermeer will wear off. Owning a reproduction of a masterwork (perhaps Girl with a Pearl Earring via 3D PRINTING) could one day become as commonplace as owning a Bob Marley poster.
SEE ALSO: FOUNTAIN; VAN MEEGEREN, HAN
Most English-speaking countries know it as Chinese Whispers, but in America the game is often called Broken Telephone, usually abridged to just Telephone, or if we trust oral history—and we really shouldn’t, according to this very entry—other designations, such as Grapevine, Gossip, and Operator.
Whatever its name, the game begins when a brood of people (usually children) gathers in a circle. One person whispers a message into the ear of an adjacent person, and that person whispers what they hear to the next, and so on, until the message circumnavigates the room. When the communiqué returns to its origin, the roving message is announced aloud. Everyone chuckles at its garbled incoherence.
The game is often deployed as a life lesson, an illustration of how gossip snowballs into misinformation. The same accumulative error also produces urban legends, such as the apocryphal tale behind the song “In the Air Tonight.” In a BBC interview, Phil Collins even cited Chinese Whispers as the mechanism for the legend:
I don’t know what this song is about. . . .
I hear these stories which started many years ago, particularly in America, of someone come up to me and said, “Did you really see someone drowning?”
I said, “No, wrong.”
And then every time I go back to America, the story gets Chinese Whispers. It gets more and more elaborate. It’s so frustrating.28
Maybe it is frustrating, but Chinese Whispers is also a handy metaphor for reflecting on the authenticity of canonical texts. When reading Plato, for instance, you might assume the words are translated from original dialogues, but that seems unlikely. Plato was hanging at the Acropolis around the year 400 BCE, but the oldest manuscripts we have are literally medieval—from 900 CE. That’s 1,300 years of transcription with no record of provenance.
Or consider HOMER. The Iliad was probably written (or more likely, spoken) around 700 BCE, but the earliest fully extant manuscript is from 900 CE—more than 1,600 years later. Is it possible that verbatim copies of the Iliad were passed down for 1,600 years? Sure. But it seems you forgot the childhood teachings of Chinese Whispers.
SEE ALSO: HOMER; MONDEGREEN; RASHOMON EFFECT; SNOPES
The Church of SubGenius is a spoof religion with vengeful extraterrestrial gods, created to satirize other religions but accidentally developing the qualities of an actual religion. (But it’s not Scientology.)
According to photocopied scripture (zines), a drilling equipment salesman from the ‘50s, J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, is the prophet of the church. The religion is polytheistic—with deities that include aliens, mutants, and fictional characters—but the central deity is Jehovah 1, a wrathful extraterrestrial who contacted Dobbs on his self-made television.
The religion eschews absolute truth, making doctrine difficult to pin down, but a mélange of popular culture, conspiracy theories, and other religions constitutes its antidogma. The central tenet involves attaining a state of Slack, defined as “perfect luck, effortless achievement.” Ways to attain Slack include sex and avoiding work.
The primary symbol of the religion is clipart that the church maintains is Dobbs with a pipe. The image spread as an underground phenomenon in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when truth through absurdity seemed a radical method for rejecting mainstream culture. A lot of stoned slackers kinda believed the orthodoxy of the Church of SubGenius, or played along with believing it, which might be the same thing as believing it.
SEE ALSO: OPERATION MINDFUCK; XENU
Clapter is the earnest applause of a like-minded audience. Clapter is the polite laughter at a joke that matches your political taste, even if it isn’t funny. Clapter is the robotic response to politically edifying humor. Clapter is the soft hum of a crowd agreeing with itself. Clapter is approval over adulation.
Clapter—a portmanteau of clapping and laughter—was coined by comedian Seth Meyers to connote political humor that reaffirms existing beliefs.
SEE ALSO: CANNED HEAT; CLAQUE; LAUGH TRACK
A claque is a group of people hired to applaud a performer. The practice of orchestrated applause dates back to at least Nero, who maintained a claque of 5,000 soldiers, but the word itself derives from French for to clap, because rieurs (laughers), pleureurs (criers), and bisseurs (encore-ers) were routinely hired at operas and plays in France up until the late nineteenth century.
If the claque seems an absurd conceit of the past, consider its recent resurrection in the form of Donald Trump. At his very first campaign event, the famous Trump Tower launch of his presidential campaign, actors were paid $50 each to wear campaign T-shirts and cheer as the neo-Nero descended on a gold-plated escalator.29 The campaign also hired actors to act as “concerned citizens” on local news and regularly positioned a Greek chorus of paid staffers to holler and jeer reporters. The claque is back.
SEE ALSO: CANNED HEAT; CLAPTER; CRISIS ACTORS; LAUGH TRACK; THE METHOD; MOIROLOGIST
Clickbait is anything on the internet that you disagree with. Or sigh, that is the regrettably weakened definition of a once-specific word that has suffered many rounds of semantic dilution.
Initially, clickbait was an invective cast toward a particular internet specimen, a story that preyed upon your curiosity gap with a cliffhanger headline: “. . . and You Won’t Believe What Happens Next” or “. . . and You Will Never Feel the Same.” These cutesy nonpareils ultimately annoyed readers who clicked through to find non-life-changing articles. Even the Oxford English Dictionary adopted this definition of clickbait: “content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page.” But that finespun definition soon dilated to encompass much more.
In its first semantic expansion, clickbait grew to include not just misdirection but any content of trifling value. Dopamine-inducing listicles and infectious cat-based slideshows were assigned the clickbait label. Content from the website Buzzfeed was most often indicted. (Actual Buzzfeed headline: “The 25 Most Awkward Cat Sleeping Positions.” It has been viewed more than 3 million times.) Soon enough, even this harmless pandering was lost in the vast sea of clickbait.
Today, the term has attenuated into near meaninglessness. Clickbait is invoked for anything on the internet that you, personally, do not enjoy. Alarming headlines like “Russians Attempt to Hack American Elections” are dubbed clickbait, even if they are simply stating a fact.
SEE ALSO: THE DRESS; FIVERR; NAKED CAME THE STRANGER; YELLOW JOURNALISM
If for some reason you find yourself awake late at night, looking at the Wikipedia page for Tony Clifton, and you absently click the tab that shows its “talk” page, this declaration from user Jtpaladin will appear, just below a subtitle that reads “Tony Clifton is a real lounge singer”:
I think it’s disgusting the way Andy Kaufman and his family used Tony Clifton to make money. Tony Clifton was a lounge singer in Las Vegas when Kaufman was nothing. Tony Clifton should not be associated with Kaufman other than Clifton opened some shows for Kaufman.
This comment is funny on multiple levels, perhaps most because it has led to a Wikipedia “talk” page being cited in a reference book about misinformation.30 But more intriguingly, there are only two possible conclusions to draw from this remark: [1] Someone out there still cannot distinguish between Tony Clifton and Andy Kaufman, or [2] someone out there is still invested in conflating the two for obscure comedic effect.31
Kaufman’s alter ego, Tony Clifton, was an obnoxious lounge act who assaulted his audience with slurred crooning and scuzzy wisecracks. People who need labels for such things called it anticomedy—a sleazy has-been in a polyester suit telling intentionally bad jokes. It’s funny because it’s not funny, they might say.
But that’s not quite right. From nearly the beginning, everyone knew that Clifton was Kaufman, yet he persisted in the illusion. The gag seemed like a mockery of a Vegas lounge act, but it became something else—a bit about a performance artist who refuses to break character. And actually, that’s pretty funny.
Clifton landed his own gigs. Asked directly if he was Kaufman during an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman, Clifton sputtered that his nemesis was using his name “to get places.” On The Dinah Shore Show, Clifton took the ruse a bit too far, pouring eggs over the terrified host’s head. Taxi even hired Clifton, on a contract distinct from Kaufman’s, to appear as Louie’s brother. After fighting with the cast and crew, he either quit or was fired, depending on which story you believe. The APOCRYPHA surrounding Kaufman is vast.
To keep the gag afloat, Kaufman asked others to don the belly prosthetic, baby blue ruffles, and dark shades. The boorish curmudgeon was played by his brother, Michael, and his best friend, Bob Zmuda—both of whom are the leading proponents of the “Kaufman is still alive” theory. (His brother claimed to receive letters from Andy in 2013; Zmuda wrote an entire book in 2014, The Truth, Finally, which starts by making the case that Andy is alive but then veers toward the theory that he was closeted and may have died from an early undiagnosed case of AIDS.)
According to Zmuda, Kaufman, on his (possibly fake) deathbed, asked him to keep Tony Clifton alive. And so, the crass misanthrope still occasionally straps on the ruffles and dark shades for the occasional stand-up or benefit appearance, goofing on Elvis, hey baby.
SEE ALSO: THE MASKED MARAUDERS; SMARKS; TRUTHINESS
Dorothy Martin, an eccentric housewife in suburban Chicago, received a message from outer space in early 1954, warning her that on December 21 of that year, a great flood would inundate the planet. “It is an actual fact that the world is in a mess,” the aliens channeled to her, via automatic writing, in surprisingly turgid prose. “But the Supreme Being is going to clean house by sinking all of the land masses as we know them now and raising the land masses from under the sea.”
As luck would have it, the aliens (called Guardians) were arriving from a secret planet hidden behind the moon (called Clarion) to evacuate true believers (called Seekers) from earth. (Scientology was among the many doctrines in which Martin had dabbled.) When the day of reckoning arrived, Martin had convinced around twenty people to quit college, leave their jobs, dump their spouses, relinquish their possessions, and join her cozy apocalyptic death cult. On December 20, they gathered at her home, removed all metal from their bodies (to avoid being burned from contact with the spacecraft), and waited for the extraterrestrials to arrive.
Unbeknownst to Martin, imposters were in their midst. The social psychologist Leon Festinger and two colleagues had embedded themselves among the followers. After reading about the doomsday cult in his local paper, Festinger had infiltrated the group, hoping to study how they would react to information that contradicts their eschatological doctrine. What would happen when the little green people did not arrive? How would they rationalize their fervent beliefs against unassailable reality? Would the devotees rebel against their prophet? The researchers watched and waited.
Before midnight, after singing carols for reporters who had gathered, the group retreated to the living room, to wait.32 A clock struck midnight—yet no aliens appeared. The cultists were stunned, but they waited. By 2:00 am, the room was dead silent; everyone appeared worried. Finally, at 4:45 am, Martin received a new prophecy from the aliens—the human race would be saved! Because the followers had impressed god with their faith, they would be spared from annihilation. How did the group respond? Surprisingly, with renewed vigor. To mitigate the mental discomfort of reality conflicting with prophecy, the group quickly updated their beliefs to fit the new circumstance. Armageddon, they reasoned, was simply postponed.
From what he witnessed, Festinger developed a psychological framework, which he called cognitive dissonance, to characterize the discomfort one feels when holding two contradictory beliefs. At the center of Festinger’s theory is a question, how do we change our minds? “A man with a conviction is a hard man to change,” he wrote crisply in When Prophecy Fails (1956). “Show him facts and figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point. We all have experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in their belief.” And when that conviction involves imminent salvation from the heavens, “it may even be less painful to tolerate the dissonance than to discard the belief and admit one had been wrong.”
Changing your mind sucks, and no one likes to admit they are wrong. Festinger’s framework showed how, when forced to change our minds, we can resolve the dissonance. Later studies, from Festinger and others, went a step further, illustrating how individuals develop coping mechanisms, not merely to adopt new information but to avoid encountering it at all. Through a decision-making rigmarole called motivated reasoning, people find clever ways to mitigate cognitive dissonance by never encountering it. By steering clear of potentially contradictory information, one can avoid the discomfort of changing their mind. Research shows that people actively seek out agreeable information while cunningly avoiding, ignoring, devaluing, or simply forgetting contradictory information.
Cognitive dissonance goes a long way toward explaining our current partisan media environment.
SEE ALSO: BACKFIRE EFFECT; BARNUM EFFECT; CONFIRMATION BIAS; DOUBLE THINK; FILTER BUBBLE; GASLIGHTING; MANDELA EFFECT; NEWSPEAK
In the spring of 1989, two electrochemists held a press conference in Salt Lake City to announce an incredible discovery: a new source of energy that was clean, cheap, and abundant.33 The scientists claimed that through a simple process (requiring merely a test tube of heavy water, plus some palladium, lithium, and a jolt of electricity) they could create a small nuclear reaction. Cold fusion, it was called, but “cold” only by comparison to the sun, where traditional fusion occurs. This nuclear reaction, which produced no waste material, could be induced at room temperature. For an instant, it seemed the world was about to change forever.
It was an opportune time to believe in the impossible. The tantalizing promise of unlimited energy, yanked from the pages of science fiction, could not have come at a better moment. Memories of the ‘70s oil crisis still haunted America, while the impending meltdown of the Cold War created a vibe of utopian credulity. At first, the media loved the story, hyping it with unfettered glee (“The Race for Fusion” splashed Newsweek on its cover), but hopes were quickly dashed (“Fusion or Illusion?” Time inquired on its cover, only a month after the initial press conference). Before we could even welcome flying cars and warp drive into our lives, the thrilling vision of infinite energy was imploding.
Other scientists quickly debunked the findings of the cold fusion electrochemists. Scientific fraud, thankfully, did not appear to be the culprit; more likely, this was a simple matter of poor methodology and unchecked optimism. “Some scientist put a thermometer at one place and not another” is how one physicist denounced the faulty research. Another remarked that the mishap was the result of “incompetence and perhaps delusion.”
Yes, perhaps. But just for a moment, their delusion made the most harebrained science fiction fantasies seem possible.
SEE ALSO: AETHER; DARK ENERGY; SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT; SOKAL HOAX; UTOPIA
That’s what it said, in bold and shimmery letters, right there on the November 1996 cover of Esquire, next to a tangle of blond bed-hair tumbling to the halter top of Allegra Coleman, Hollywood’s newest starlet, who had finally landed her first magazine profile. Inside, Esquire dished on the debutante’s rocky relationship with the friendly David Schwimmer, glossed over her recent tabloid nude photos, and hinted at a new suitor, Quentin Tarantino. “She is without blind vanities,” Deepak Chopra gushed. “Her nature is spongy and luminescent.”
Calls immediately poured into Esquire from publicists and agents, hoping to sign the new It Girl. Finally, the magazine issued a confessional press release: Allegra Coleman was fake. “A parody of the celebrity journalism that’s run wild in the ‘90s,” is how Esquire described their spoof, but the target of such parody seemed unclear. The same issue of the magazine contained a (very real) profile of the Baldwin brothers and a (seemingly real) think-piece on “the post-gay man.”
And yet, a question persisted: Who was the woman on the cover? Agents and publicists still wanted the face, even if the story was phony-baloney. The answer: Ali Larter, an unknown model, who instantly started to receive casting calls. With no prior acting experience, Larter landed small roles on shows like Dawson’s Creek and Chicago Hope, which led to higher profile gigs, including the movies Legally Blonde and recurring franchise characters in Final Destination and Resident Evil, and eventually a starring role in NBC’s science fiction drama Heroes, where she played identical triplet superheroes with dissociative identity disorder. (She would also appear, as herself, on covers of Cosmo, Lucky, Shape, Allure—and Esquire Mexico.)
The fake profile of an ingénue launched a very real acting career.
SEE ALSO: CELEBRITY SEX TAPES; WARHOL, ANDY
A concern troll inveigles their way into discussions by posing as an ally but soon undermines the topic with their disingenuous concerns. They feign interest in your plight as a cover for mischief. Their chicanery can be difficult to spot, but these patronizing impostors often begin sentences like this:
• “I have just a few questions . . .”
• “I agree, but others might not see your point . . .”
• “Your position might be too extreme . . .”
• “I am worried about you . . .”
• “You are being too strident about . . .”
• “I’m with you, but . . .”
• “We could improve your argument by . . .”
After cajoling their way into a community, the concern troll uses cloying rhetoric to neuter debate. With just a few innocent questions, they can steer a conversation into the ditch.
The biggest dilemma is that a concern troll can often resemble an honest critic simply trying to disrupt groupthink. This makes their conniving agitprop so insidious—they make you doubt your convictions. Are they allies or agent provocateurs? Sometimes not even the concern troll knows the answer.
SEE ALSO: CONFIDENCE GAME; FALSE FLAG OPERATION; GASLIGHTING; INTERNET TROLL
In movies, confidence games are limned with ornate plotting, layer upon layer of calculated treachery. Who is deceiving whom? is the baroque game of skulduggery in these capers, performed with particular elegance in The Sting and The Spanish Prisoner. Despite the knotty storylines on the screen, grifts are ultimately distillable to one very simple edict: Tell a story that persuades the victim. And to persuade, you must become a convincing actor. “A con game,” said Ricky Jay in House of Games, “is a dramatization for an audience of one person.”34
That one-member audience, known as the mark, also dictates the mechanics of the con. Some grifts exploit a mark’s naiveté; in others, their opportunism blinds them to the ruse. A master con incorporates the faults of their marks.
Because the mark participates in their own undoing, the con artist is sometimes referred to as the most noble criminal. A good con man never forces you to do anything. He doesn’t steal; you give. Guns and violence are prohibited in most cons. The only weapon is the story of the con itself.35
GRIFTER TERM |
MEANING |
Account Flash |
A large sum of money briefly appearing in a mark’s bank account |
Basement Dealer |
A card player who deals from the bottom of the deck |
Big Store |
Scam with a large team and elaborate sets |
Blow Off |
To shake the mark after a con |
Cackle Bladder |
When a con artist fakes his death with fake blood |
Change Raising |
Short con where you give less change in a transaction than it seems |
Cool Off |
Pacifying a victim so he does not contact the police |
Crack out of Turn |
When someone accidentally goes off-script and ruins the con |
Curdle |
When something goes wrong in a con |
Earnest Money |
Money given by the mark as a show of good faith |
Fiddle Game |
Two-person scam involving elevated pricing of a worthless object |
Flight Store |
Long con involving a (perceived) fixed boxing match |
Fine Wirers |
A good pickpocket |
Gaff |
Prop or gimmick used in a scam |
Glim-dropper |
Variation on the Fiddle Game with a one-eyed man |
Jamaican Switch |
Con involving money switched for worthless paper |
Mark |
The intended victim |
Pig in a Poke |
Medieval scam; a mark buys a bag with a cat inside, expecting a pig |
Pigeon Drop |
Scam in which the mark puts up earnest money to secure a larger sum |
Play the C |
The first step in a con, winning the confidence of a mark |
Roper |
The person who brings a mark into the scam |
Salting the Mine |
Making a mine look more valuable by secretly placing gold in it |
Shill |
An accomplice on the con |
Short Con |
A quick grift with low returns |
Single-O |
Grifter who works solo |
Sliders |
People on the look-out for police during a con |
Slough |
A universal safe word to abort the con |
Spanish Prisoner |
Scam where the mark is enlisted to retrieve (nonexistent) stolen money |
Sting |
The precise moment when the money is taken from the mark |
Tell |
An unconscious signal giving away a scheme |
Long cons require a large cast of bamboozlers. As such, the profession—a sort of ad hoc community theater troupe—has developed a playful nomenclature around their camaraderie. (Honor among thieves, and all that.) This vernacular of the flimflam was parodied in the Ocean’s trilogy, in such lines as “It’s actually a Lookie-Loo with a Bundle of Joy.”36 The suggestion is clear: Cons are equivalent to tropes, or stock narrative devices, which can be moved around from scene to scene. Like the dramatic arts, cons are composed of interchangeable blocks—a coldhearted swindle here, a conspiring pinch there. Both are art forms that demand perfect timing, shades of believability, and attention to details of stagecraft.
Because this is an encyclopedia, a compendium of vocabulary is obligatory. The glossary to the left contains some of the more savory patois used in the grifter underworld, gathered indiscriminately from across criminal history.
SEE ALSO: CRISIS ACTORS; FALSE FLAG OPERATION; HONEYTRAP; PONZI SCHEME; SNIPE HUNT
Confirmation bias is the overwhelming tendency to seek out information that conforms with existing beliefs while ignoring facts that contradict entrenched viewpoints. The bias helps explain diverse phenomena, from why conservatives watch FOX News to how astrology can persist in an age of reason, from why Ariana Grande gets played on the radio to why cops can exhibit racial profiling prejudices.
Confirmation bias is a democratic ailment—no one consumes information with complete objectivity. (Not even you, super freethinker.) An immense amount of sociological research has gone into the phenomenon, with entire shelves of documented experimentation.
SEE ALSO: BACKFIRE EFFECT; BARNUM EFFECT; COGNITIVE DISSONANCE; FILTER BUBBLE; OVERTON WINDOW; PAREIDOLIA; WOOZLE EFFECT
Cosplay is a form of interactive roleplaying for enthusiastic fans with very, very, very passionate feelings (shut up, not in that way) for a fictional character. Cosplaying involves donning a costume that embodies an adored character, usually drawn from fantasy or science fiction.37
The term comes from Japan, naturally, but is actually a portmanteau of two English words, costume and play. The “play” half is crucial, as it suggests a lively social activity. Enormous festivals and conventions, with judged competitions, have exploded around cosplay communities.
Cosplay costumes often require elaborate construction and accessorizing. Raw materials include wigs, metallic fabric, fake fur, hair dye, liquid latex, contact lenses, body paint, facial cosmetics, costume jewelry, tassels, and prop weapons. As in life, the simulacrum engenders a delicate balance. Each cosplayer weighs authenticity against aesthetics, strict precision versus personal style, in assembling their costume. “The role of expression,” as sociologist Erving Goff-man once wrote, “is conveying impressions of self.”38
Generally considered harmless fun by its enthusiasts, cosplay is also sociologically complex, often generating complicated discussions about race, gender, body, and identity. Caution: Accusing cosplayers of kinky motivations will often yield scorn. Avoid doing so, unless you are dressed as Link.
SEE ALSO: FANFIC; LARP; SLASHFIC; SMARKS
Cotard delusion, also known as “walking corpse syndrome,” is a mental condition in which a person believes they are dead. Those afflicted with this extremely rare disorder suspect that they, or parts of their body, have disintegrated. They report feeling like zombies.
Because the psychosis is so rare, with approximately one hundred reported cases worldwide, very few patients have had neurological scans. But the results from those scant scans have been shocking: Metabolic activity across large areas of the brain appears similar to someone in a vegetative state, as though actually brain dead.
Neurologically, the condition seems related to CAPGRAS DELUSION, which is the belief that someone close to you, typically your spouse, is an impostor, and FREGOLI DELUSION, the belief that different people are a single person.
SEE ALSO: CAPGRAS DELUSION; FREGOLI DELUSION; PAUL IS DEAD; TRUMAN SYNDROME
Crisis actors are (real) professional thespians hired to play victims during (fake) military training exercises. However, in the hands of conspiracy theorists, crisis actors play a more sinister role: participants in FALSE FLAG OPERATIONS.
According to these elaborate theories, crisis actors are dispatched by the government (or the media) to portray victims, witnesses, or emergency response technicians during “scripted” national tragedies, including bombings, mass shootings, and terrorist events. The conspiracists—particularly those associated with the uberconspiratorial website Infowars—claim these actors have even been coached to recite memorized lines during breaking news.
Wake up, sheeple!
Crisis actors are a relatively new tool in the subterfuge handbook. The term surged in popularity around 2013 when some INTERNET TROLLS pasted together photos of similar-looking victims from the Sandy Hook massacre, the Aurora shooting, and the Boston Marathon bombing into “same girl” memes.
SEE ALSO: ASTROTURFING; CLAQUE; FALSE FLAG OPERATION; INTERNET TROLL; LARP; THE METHOD; PAREIDOLIA; ROSENHAM EFFECT; SOCK PUPPET; TROJAN HORSE
Cryptids are animals whose existences have not yet been documented by the scientific community. Or rather, that is the panglossian spin of the cryptozoologist, a person who studies such furtive creatures and believes their special species will one day be proven authentic.
The most well-known cryptids inhabiting the safari of disputed fauna include the Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Chupacabra. In Cryptozoology A To Z (1999), Loren Coleman, a godfather of the field, discusses around 120 such creatures. Wikipedia maintains a list of around 230 possible cryptids.
The word cryptozoology derives from three Greek words—kryptos, zoon, and logos—which translate as hidden, animal, and discourse. It is therefore literally the science of hidden animals. Some researchers consider cryptozoology a pseudoscience, but that appraisal overlooks the jungle of creatures once deemed cryptids that have since been proven to exist, such as the thylacine, a mashup of a dog and a kangaroo that once seemed too whimsical to exist but turned out to be real.
Cryptids cast a wide net, comprising a range of eccentric creatures—urban legends (chupacabras), creatures thought extinct (coelacanths), extreme taxidermy (jackalopes), extreme taxidermy proven real (platypuses), whimsical mythology (griffins), and even our own cousins (Neanderthals). Essentially any animal whose existence has been disputed is a cryptid. This page contains a chart of the more prominent cryptids through history.
SEE ALSO: AREA 51; BONSAI KITTEN; CARDIFF GIANT; SNIPE HUNT; ZARDULU
If you wanted to know how many degrees of separation Kevin Bacon is from Bill Murray, you might try querying an internet hivemind collective—Quora, Reddit, Yahoo Answers, or Twitter. Eventually, someone might respond to your inquiry. But if you want the answer right now, a much faster tactic would be to make an inaccurate declaration: “Kevin Bacon was in Frost/Nixon with Sam Rockwell, who was in Iron Man 2 with Scarlett Johansson, who was in Lost in Translation with Bill Murray. Three degrees of separation!” Some IMDB know-it-all will immediately recognize your convoluted folly and promptly correct you. “You’re a goddamn moron. Kevin Bacon was in the indelible masterpiece Wild Things with Bill Murray. One degree, numbskull.”
CRYPTID |
LOCATION |
DESCRIPTION |
STATUS |
Loch Ness Monster |
Scotland |
Lake monster with a long neck |
Famously photographed in 1934, Nessie is the most disputed cryptid—and probably a hoax. |
Giant Squid |
All the world’s oceans |
A squid with gigantism |
Deemed folklore for centuries, its status changed in the 1870s when corpses washed ashore in Canada. Not photographed alive until 2004. |
Kraken |
Norway & Greenland |
An octopus with gigantism |
Allegedly witnessed by seamen for centuries, the legendary sea monster might actually have been the Giant Squid. |
Sasquatch |
Pacific Northwest |
Taller, hairier human, like Chewbacca |
An infamous one-minute film shot in 1967 supposedly captured the Bigfoot, which was probably a man in an ape suit. |
Woolly Mammoth |
Northern climes around the globe |
Hairy cousin of an elephant |
Currently the subject of competing cloning experiments, the mammoth was long presumed extinct before 12,000 BCE but probably survived until 4,000 BCE. |
Chupacabra |
Mexico, Puerto Rico, American Southwest |
A reptilian kangaroo from outer space |
From the Portuguese for “goat-sucker,” the urban legend began in 1995 when livestock drained of blood were discovered. |
Jackalope |
The American West |
A jackrabbit with antelope horns |
This gag taxidermy was used in Old West tall tales to trick children and gullible city folk. |
Mermaid |
All the world’s oceans |
A human (usually female) with the tail of a fish |
A favorite of mythology and fairy tales, mermaids were reported by Columbus and put on display by P. T. Barnum. |
Komodo Dragon |
Indonesia |
Lizard that can grow up to ten feet long |
Considered mythical in the West until 1910, the Komodo population is believed to be around 3,000 today. |
Neanderthals |
Northern Europe and Asia |
Us, but with larger noses, more hair, and heavier brows |
They live, inside us. Despite going extinct 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals make up 1 to 4 percent of our DNA through inter-breeding and persist through legends (Sasquatch, Yeti). |
Platypus |
Egg-laying, duck-billed mammal |
Australia |
Deemed a sewn-together hoax when its pelt first appeared in 1799, this freak of nature persists in Australia today. |
Tasmanian Tiger (aka Thylacine) |
Tasmania |
Doglike marsupial |
Once thought mythical, the thylacine really existed but is now believed extinct. Ted Turner once offered a $100,000 reward for proof of a living thylacine. |
This is Cunningham’s Law in action. It states: The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question but to post the wrong answer.
In other words, misinformation sometimes outperforms information, especially when prodding people to take action. (Sherlock Holmes proffered a similar insight: “People don’t like telling you things. They love to contradict you.”)
The source of the law is Ward Cunningham, the father of wiki software—a sublime coincidence, because Wikipedia is an apt proof of Cunningham’s Law.
SEE ALSO: BOGUS PIPELINE; CONCERN TROLLING; LIE-TO-CHILDREN; SNOPES; STREISAND EFFECT
“The term cyborg is a contraction of ‘cybernetic organism’ and refers to the product of human/machine hybridization,” says The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. That impressive reference tome is the most pertinent source of citation for this entry, as cyborgs are nearly synonymous with science fiction, at least for now.
Often used as a trope to contrast with human foibles, cyborgs play a key role in our rampant “is it man or machine?” sci-fi narratives. Fictional examples of cyborgs include the Cybermen in Doctor Who, the Borg in Star Trek, replicants in Blade Runner, hosts in Westworld, Darth Vader in Star Wars, cylons in Battlestar Galactica, and the titular characters in Terminator and RoboCop.
Back in real life, hints of cyborg enhancements can be found in pacemakers, cochlear implants, artificial hearts, bionic eyes, artificial limbs, contact lenses, and even dentures. Depending on your appetite for malleable definitions, the list of cyborgian appendages might include Stephen Hawking’s speech synthesizer, semiautomated artificial intelligence systems, or—if you’re feeling like an intrepid robot—even the internet.
SEE ALSO: ELIZA EFFECT; FRANKENFOOD; GREEBLES; HUMAN CLONING; MECHANICAL TURK; TURING TEST; UNCANNY VALLEY; VOIGHT-KAMPFF MACHINE; TUPAC HOLOGRAM
21 This scenario is, of course, derived from Game of Thrones. On television, the scene transpires in “What Is Dead May Never Die,” the third episode of the second season; in the books, in chapters 17 and 25 of A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin.
22 Surprisingly, no matter how many seasons of Unreal you watch, the secret mechanics of reality television remain somewhat guarded. But this revealing story, published in May 2014 on Vulture.com, provides a rare behind-the-scenes account of how a reality show is constructed. (Much of it is manufactured, but not necessarily the parts you would imagine.)
23 Practically every celebrity, from Justin Bieber to Von Miller to Lauren Conrad, has endured a rumored sex tape. No one has seen it, but we know that presidential candidate John Edwards recorded himself with his mistress Rielle Hunter, because a judge ordered the tape be destroyed.
24 They still deny involvement. According to Rolling Stone’s “Pam and Tommy: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Sex Tape” (the most riveting 7,400 words you will ever read about a sex tape), the video made $77 million in its first year.
25 Does water count as a food? If so, bottled water undoubtedly prevails as the biggest culinary marketing scam in history.
26 Among your vibrant website options: ChinaOilPaintingGallery.com, OilPaintingSupplier.com, Super-Art.com, OilPaintingCentre.com, and OilPaintingsGallery.com. There are more. Many, many more.
27 About 500 miles away in Wushipu Village, in the city of Xiamen, directly across from Taiwan, another estimated 5,000 artists are employed the same way.
28 According to the legend, Phil Collins witnessed a person drowning but was too far away to help. But he also saw another person, close enough to rescue the victim, who did nothing. The fable ends climactically, years later, when the singer spots the soulless drowning-watcher at his concert. Pointing the arena searchlights into the crowd, Collins vindictively hate-sings “In the Air Tonight” at his spotlit face. The moral? If you can’t swim, avoid Phil Collins concerts.
29 This is not wild-eyed conspiracy mongering. The Federal Election Commission released documents proving he was billed $12,000 by a talent contractor for the fake audience.
30 Every Wikipedia entry has an associated “talk” page, which contains a blow-by-blow account of its edit-war history. Like Herodotus chronicling the Peloponnesian War, it is a highly unstable account. If you relish vociferous discord over whether Neapolitan ice cream must, by definition, contain the flavors chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry (absolutely no substitutes!), this is the place for you.
31 The other two choices—[3] they actually are different people, or [4] a sentient Andy Kaufman who still wanders the planet wrote the comment—have been dismissed as improbable.
32 Martin’s husband, who thought the death cult hooey, went to bed and slept soundly through the caper.
33 The two electrochemists were Dr. Stanley Pons and Dr. Martin Fleischmann. If nerdy names were the sole determinant in producing mad scientists, these two would be ringers for inventing a new type of energy.
34 Ricky Jay plays a cardshark in this masterful David Mamet con man thriller from 1987, but he actually says these words as himself, in the DVD commentary of the Criterion Collection version of the movie.
35 The Confidence Game (2016) by Maria Konnikova is a stupendous review of the psychological aspects of cons.
36 The Ocean’s grifts are all made up, but that line describes the con in Ocean’s Twelve, where Julia Roberts plays herself. (To recap: That’s an actress playing herself playing a grifter playing herself.) Another hustler aperçu, from Ocean’s Eleven, exemplifies the complexity of building a grift: “Off the top of my head, I’d say you’re looking at a Boesky, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy, two Jethros, and a Leon Spinks, not to mention the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever!”
37 Popular subjects include characters from “universes” like Harry Potter, Marvel Comics, Doctor Who, The Legend of Zelda, My Little Pony, Star Wars, Star Trek, Mortal Kombat, The Elder Scrolls, and Final Fantasy.
38 Long before cosplay, Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956) became the bible for dramaturgical sociologists—the “All the world’s a stage!” types.
