Hot Trends watch: Klishamoop

Here's a weird one: the term "klishamoop.com" recently hit #60 on Google's Hot Trends. I don't recommend going to the site if you're spam or virus-averse -- but if you're not, it's sort of amusing as an example of a bad scam. A11News has the details here.

Apparently, it starts when you get an email or MySpace message saying Klishamoop "has" your profile pictures, and you better go to the site to get them back. When you log into this site, a hilarious female computer voice says, "Attention, please, your profile picture has been detected on this website." 

You're then asked to input name, e-mail address, password, cellphone number and a pin -- enough for the bad guys to do you some harm. Finally, with a little ingenuity, you're given access to the profile picture you came to rescue. It's this:

Oh, I remember when that was taken -- good hair day.

Jared Fogle, center, along with E!'s Joel McHale, left, and Eddie Mata. (Photo: PR NEWSWIRE)

Poor Jared Fogle the Subway Weight Loss Guy. 

After years of force-feeding himself thousands of turkey sandwiches on wheat, hold the flavor, all he gets is a nasty, virulent death. 

What a rip!

The death is a fake, of course, but that doesn't seem to have stopped the reports  from spreading like light mayonnaise across the digital by-ways.

Fogle's name is currently one of the top ten hottest search terms on Google Hot Trends, and messages lamenting his untimely passing have been tearing up Twitter all day -- even Digg founder Kevin Rose swallowed the bait, and sent word to all 46,000 of his followers.

"A friend sent me the link, and it just seemed too obscure to not be true," Rose told us in an e-mail. "My fault."

The site Rose broadcasted was Jaredremembered.com, an amazingly detailed phony memorial to Fogle. Here's part of the death announcement posted there (and nowhere else online). Notice that it's not dated--all it says is "yesterday"--so it could apply perfectly well to today, tomorrow or whenever people first notice it:

Jared S. Fogel, best known as the spokesman for Subway sandwich shop "The Subway Guy" Born December 1st, 1977 – Died yesterday at 4:43pm EST. The autopsy has not been performed, early medical reports indicate that he has died due to abnormal abdominal adhesions resulting from his 1998 gastric bypass surgery.

There is no link to these non-existent "early medical reports," nor a mention of the hospital's name, and of course, if you didn't look too closely, you might miss the hilarious hint that this diet and exercise icon actually lost weight (and then died) from having his stomach stapled.

It also doesn't add credibility that the site's owners spell his name wrong in both the obituary and the name of the site itself. I contacted the proprietors of the site to ask them why they singled out Fogle for this kind of elaborate hoax. 

"To go viral, it can't be an a-lister," an anonymous site admin replied. "It has to be someone people recognize and know ... yet at the same time think they might have missed it in the news, or believe it's possible to have missed it in the news. It wasn't anything personal against Jared."

I'm sure Jared's cool with it -- nothing like his own weight loss-related death to draw attention to his 10th annual "Tour de Pants," a national tour he conducts to raise awareness about childhood obesity.

OH YEAH, AND: I forgot to mention that this isn't the first time Fogle's death has been rumored.  Snopes.com has a page debunking a version of the hoax from last August.  But JaredRemembered.com was created in March.  Apparently, Jared is an attractive hoax target.  Watch out, Fogle, or you'll be sucked into memehood never to escape!

Reporting contributed by Mark Milian

Oh no, not again 

At the suggestion of commenter Mark, I took a second look at the YouTube phenomenon called "Fred" to see if he was really a lone teenage filmmaker. Or if he was the front boy for some cloaked entity bent Pied Piper-like on hypnotizing millions of children with "entertaining content," only to lure them into some commercial trap.  You know, like TV.

Well I admit it hadn't occurred to me that these Fred videos would need corporate backing to be produced. They sort of seem like, I don't know, a hyperactive 12-year-old kid made them.  But call me a fool, because a link in Fred's description box sends viewers to a flashy, expensive-looking website called fredonzipit.com.  ZipIt, it turns out, is a handheld instant-messaging device — presumably to allow kids to IM each other from the comfort of their living room couch, kitchen table, desk at school, or anywhere else.  Because God forbid we should teach our kids that it's OK to go 90 seconds without filling in koolguyT0mmy94 or s1st3rSarah on your activities over the last 90 seconds, and go read a book instead.

So yes, I'm waiting for a call-back from Zipit themselves*, but I think we can go ahead and call this another viral marketing ploy.  And no point distinguishing ZipIt from the legion of other tchotchke peddlers that have been selling kids stuff they don't need since Moses was a tween.  Kids are such a big part of the YouTube demographic that this had to happen eventually.  It's just ... really with the chipmunk voice?

UPDATE (5:01pm): The truth is somewhere in between.  As it turns out, Fred—whose real name is Lucas Cruikshank—has been making amateur videos for some time, many of them with his two cousins.  Cruikshank was scouted by an L.A.-based ad firm looking for the next tween thing to anchor the launch of the Zipit product.  “Fred’s huge online following among teens and tweens, and their passion for the character, was just the magic bullet we were looking for in creating a new campaign for Zipit,” said David Abehsera, the President of WOO Agency, in a statement.  More details upcoming in a later post...

The makers of the viral videos showing friends in three countries using the death rays from their cellphones to pop popcorn are, unsurprisingly, fakes. (Gawker mostly shot the videos down on Monday).

The maker of the videos has come forward today to admit the hoax and claim its viral prize: repeated mentions of its company's name in the media and blogosphere. And if you get your video to the top of the viral charts, I guess you earn it, right? Cardo Systems makes high-end Bluetooth headsets (the joke being, I guess, that if you use their product, your brain won't get cooked by your cellphone). 

Here's one of the new videos with the advertisement appended. Enjoy, hands-free!

This seeming geometric paradox is making the rounds on Digg right now.  If you're skeptical about how 64 can equal 65, you need only read the explanation (and use the interactive Applet) here. Wow, I have neither read nor used the word Applet in several years. Takes me back to a simpler but less efficient time.

Click the drawing at left to watch.

CNN's News to Me program has selected Web Scout's UFO Hoax story as one of its favorites stories of the last year, to be included in its one-year anniversary show in a few weeks.

They've got a contest in which readers select their favorite from the list of nominees (you can also watch the UFO segment that ran on CNN here).

This is not a shameless appeal to readers to vote for my story. I urge you to choose your favorite from the slate -- and there are some pretty neat ones, including the now-famous Post Secret and the Exploding Whale. May the best candidate win.

As it stands, Tuxedo Travels, the story of two men traveling the world to save humanity wearing tuxedos, has 95% of the vote. And even though it looks like only a few people have voted, deficits like that are notoriously difficult to overcome.

According to FishBowlNY, the NYT's piece on the Rickrolling of an Eastern Washington University hoops game a few weeks ago was apparently based on, er, some dubious evidence. In other words, some guy made it all up.  I cited the NYT's story in my RickRoll piece from yesterday, and even watched the video, so no fair playing the neener game, but ...

If the video was really the only source for the story, that might be classified as a bit of an oopsie, not just because everything on the Internet is a hoax until proven otherwise, but because the video indeed looks like it was heavily edited, set to music, etc -- not a document but a piece of entertainment. 

And so it was ...

I received this e-mail after my story about trying to find 90DayJane went online last week. See the story here. In the letter below, the author of the controversial, short-lived 90DayJane blog reflects on the nature of fame, vows she won't reveal her identity and muses on whether she'll ever do anything as "big" as 90DayJane. A couple of sentences from the letter have been editorially redacted.

Hi David,

Please know that if I were not paranoid about my online security and anonymity I'm sure someone would have found me. It seems to have become a fun challenge to some warez people.

The thing about fame (I think) is that no one ever gets to choose what they are "famous" for. Unlike being respected in a chosen profession or achieving some great feat, fame is a simple situation wherein someone has managed to get to the top of the "cultural dog pile" (your words). People don't get to choose how the public perceives them and they can spend a lot of time and money trying to change that perception. By keeping my identity away from 90DayJane, I get to skip all of that.

This is the story of how I lost Jane before I ever found her.

"I am going to kill myself in 90 days," she wrote on her diary at 90dayjane.com on Feb. 5. "What else should I say?"

Jane was young -- 24. She lived in L.A., had even put up a shot of her favorite local Starbucks, the Hollywood sign in the background. Her bio photo showed a pretty brunet, hair draped across her eyes, like a closing curtain. The blog's macabre signature was an image of a young woman's wrists, apparently tattooed with neat lines. Cut here.

"This blog is not a cry for help," she wrote. "I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

This Camusian anti-logic instantly lighted a netwide fire. 90DayJane.com became a flash point, drawing hundreds of thousands of views, dozens of speculative blog posts and a string of comments so dripping with suspicion, abuse and even anger that it was clear Jane had hit a nerve before she ever picked up a razor blade.

This 24-year-old Los Angeles blogger says she's going to kill herself--and she wants you to help her plan it.

UPDATE: 90DayJane has pulled the plug. Her project was "a personal art piece," and "must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours."

Well, guess that's it then. Just when we had our magnifying glasses polished and our pipes nicely stoked...

This is either a very serious and unfunny situation where someone's young life is at stake, or--much, much, much more likely (given the precedent of pretty-young-women-in-trouble hoaxes), it's the latest envelope pushing net publicity stunt. 

"This blog is not a cry for help," writes 90 Day Jane in her blog's bio.  "Or even to get attention. It's simply a public record of my last 90 days in existence. I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

No, all you need is a sensational idea, some web savvy, and a crew of gullible web detectives to take the bait.  That latter element has been taken care of by myself and web myth buster extraordinaire Richard Rushfield, who led the charge in cracking the famous lonelygirl15 hoax.

So, as we digest our hook, line and sinker, let's go over what we know so far:

-- Basic info:  Jane is* 24, lives in Los Angeles, has family back east.  She is slim and attractive (see this partially NSFW YouTube vid of her trying on her dress for the "blessed day.")  She clearly knows how to edit video.  And she's going to stay anonymous and not grant any interviews. 

-- Other characters:  Guy at work she's going to go out on a Valentine's Day date with.  "I just hope he's not looking for anything long-term," she writes.  Clever, but suicidal?

-- Web clues:  The blog.  The video (where is this vintage clothing store?).  The Facebook profile and group. The strange bulletin board she plugs without explanation.  The picture of a Hollywood-adjacent location near her favorite Starbucks--can anyone give the precise intersection?

Let us know if we're being too skeptical--if anyone has any reason to believe this should be taken more seriously, we're all ears.  There have been Internet-related suicides before--including the recent and tragic case of 13-year-old Megan Meir, who killed herself after allegedly being bullied on MySpace by a friend's mother. 

90-day Jane may be 'riffing' on this unhappy trend.  But her take on suicide is so slick and glib, it's hard to think it's the real thing.

*here we use the 'to be' verb in the loosest possible sense.

Subway's 'Jared Fogel's' death hoaxed. Digg shovels dirt on grave

Jared Fogle, center, along with E!'s Joel McHale, left, and Eddie Mata. (Photo: PR NEWSWIRE)

Poor Jared Fogle the Subway Weight Loss Guy. 

After years of force-feeding himself thousands of turkey sandwiches on wheat, hold the flavor, all he gets is a nasty, virulent death. 

What a rip!

The death is a fake, of course, but that doesn't seem to have stopped the reports  from spreading like light mayonnaise across the digital by-ways.

Fogle's name is currently one of the top ten hottest search terms on Google Hot Trends, and messages lamenting his untimely passing have been tearing up Twitter all day -- even Digg founder Kevin Rose swallowed the bait, and sent word to all 46,000 of his followers.

"A friend sent me the link, and it just seemed too obscure to not be true," Rose told us in an e-mail. "My fault."

The site Rose broadcasted was Jaredremembered.com, an amazingly detailed phony memorial to Fogle. Here's part of the death announcement posted there (and nowhere else online). Notice that it's not dated--all it says is "yesterday"--so it could apply perfectly well to today, tomorrow or whenever people first notice it:

Jared S. Fogel, best known as the spokesman for Subway sandwich shop "The Subway Guy" Born December 1st, 1977 – Died yesterday at 4:43pm EST. The autopsy has not been performed, early medical reports indicate that he has died due to abnormal abdominal adhesions resulting from his 1998 gastric bypass surgery.

There is no link to these non-existent "early medical reports," nor a mention of the hospital's name, and of course, if you didn't look too closely, you might miss the hilarious hint that this diet and exercise icon actually lost weight (and then died) from having his stomach stapled.

It also doesn't add credibility that the site's owners spell his name wrong in both the obituary and the name of the site itself. I contacted the proprietors of the site to ask them why they singled out Fogle for this kind of elaborate hoax. 

"To go viral, it can't be an a-lister," an anonymous site admin replied. "It has to be someone people recognize and know ... yet at the same time think they might have missed it in the news, or believe it's possible to have missed it in the news. It wasn't anything personal against Jared."

I'm sure Jared's cool with it -- nothing like his own weight loss-related death to draw attention to his 10th annual "Tour de Pants," a national tour he conducts to raise awareness about childhood obesity.

OH YEAH, AND: I forgot to mention that this isn't the first time Fogle's death has been rumored.  Snopes.com has a page debunking a version of the hoax from last August.  But JaredRemembered.com was created in March.  Apparently, Jared is an attractive hoax target.  Watch out, Fogle, or you'll be sucked into memehood never to escape!

Reporting contributed by Mark Milian

Oh no, not again 

At the suggestion of commenter Mark, I took a second look at the YouTube phenomenon called "Fred" to see if he was really a lone teenage filmmaker. Or if he was the front boy for some cloaked entity bent Pied Piper-like on hypnotizing millions of children with "entertaining content," only to lure them into some commercial trap.  You know, like TV.

Well I admit it hadn't occurred to me that these Fred videos would need corporate backing to be produced. They sort of seem like, I don't know, a hyperactive 12-year-old kid made them.  But call me a fool, because a link in Fred's description box sends viewers to a flashy, expensive-looking website called fredonzipit.com.  ZipIt, it turns out, is a handheld instant-messaging device — presumably to allow kids to IM each other from the comfort of their living room couch, kitchen table, desk at school, or anywhere else.  Because God forbid we should teach our kids that it's OK to go 90 seconds without filling in koolguyT0mmy94 or s1st3rSarah on your activities over the last 90 seconds, and go read a book instead.

So yes, I'm waiting for a call-back from Zipit themselves*, but I think we can go ahead and call this another viral marketing ploy.  And no point distinguishing ZipIt from the legion of other tchotchke peddlers that have been selling kids stuff they don't need since Moses was a tween.  Kids are such a big part of the YouTube demographic that this had to happen eventually.  It's just ... really with the chipmunk voice?

UPDATE (5:01pm): The truth is somewhere in between.  As it turns out, Fred—whose real name is Lucas Cruikshank—has been making amateur videos for some time, many of them with his two cousins.  Cruikshank was scouted by an L.A.-based ad firm looking for the next tween thing to anchor the launch of the Zipit product.  “Fred’s huge online following among teens and tweens, and their passion for the character, was just the magic bullet we were looking for in creating a new campaign for Zipit,” said David Abehsera, the President of WOO Agency, in a statement.  More details upcoming in a later post...

The makers of the viral videos showing friends in three countries using the death rays from their cellphones to pop popcorn are, unsurprisingly, fakes. (Gawker mostly shot the videos down on Monday).

The maker of the videos has come forward today to admit the hoax and claim its viral prize: repeated mentions of its company's name in the media and blogosphere. And if you get your video to the top of the viral charts, I guess you earn it, right? Cardo Systems makes high-end Bluetooth headsets (the joke being, I guess, that if you use their product, your brain won't get cooked by your cellphone). 

Here's one of the new videos with the advertisement appended. Enjoy, hands-free!

This seeming geometric paradox is making the rounds on Digg right now.  If you're skeptical about how 64 can equal 65, you need only read the explanation (and use the interactive Applet) here. Wow, I have neither read nor used the word Applet in several years. Takes me back to a simpler but less efficient time.

Click the drawing at left to watch.

CNN's News to Me program has selected Web Scout's UFO Hoax story as one of its favorites stories of the last year, to be included in its one-year anniversary show in a few weeks.

They've got a contest in which readers select their favorite from the list of nominees (you can also watch the UFO segment that ran on CNN here).

This is not a shameless appeal to readers to vote for my story. I urge you to choose your favorite from the slate -- and there are some pretty neat ones, including the now-famous Post Secret and the Exploding Whale. May the best candidate win.

As it stands, Tuxedo Travels, the story of two men traveling the world to save humanity wearing tuxedos, has 95% of the vote. And even though it looks like only a few people have voted, deficits like that are notoriously difficult to overcome.

According to FishBowlNY, the NYT's piece on the Rickrolling of an Eastern Washington University hoops game a few weeks ago was apparently based on, er, some dubious evidence. In other words, some guy made it all up.  I cited the NYT's story in my RickRoll piece from yesterday, and even watched the video, so no fair playing the neener game, but ...

If the video was really the only source for the story, that might be classified as a bit of an oopsie, not just because everything on the Internet is a hoax until proven otherwise, but because the video indeed looks like it was heavily edited, set to music, etc -- not a document but a piece of entertainment. 

And so it was ...

I received this e-mail after my story about trying to find 90DayJane went online last week. See the story here. In the letter below, the author of the controversial, short-lived 90DayJane blog reflects on the nature of fame, vows she won't reveal her identity and muses on whether she'll ever do anything as "big" as 90DayJane. A couple of sentences from the letter have been editorially redacted.

Hi David,

Please know that if I were not paranoid about my online security and anonymity I'm sure someone would have found me. It seems to have become a fun challenge to some warez people.

The thing about fame (I think) is that no one ever gets to choose what they are "famous" for. Unlike being respected in a chosen profession or achieving some great feat, fame is a simple situation wherein someone has managed to get to the top of the "cultural dog pile" (your words). People don't get to choose how the public perceives them and they can spend a lot of time and money trying to change that perception. By keeping my identity away from 90DayJane, I get to skip all of that.

This is the story of how I lost Jane before I ever found her.

"I am going to kill myself in 90 days," she wrote on her diary at 90dayjane.com on Feb. 5. "What else should I say?"

Jane was young -- 24. She lived in L.A., had even put up a shot of her favorite local Starbucks, the Hollywood sign in the background. Her bio photo showed a pretty brunet, hair draped across her eyes, like a closing curtain. The blog's macabre signature was an image of a young woman's wrists, apparently tattooed with neat lines. Cut here.

"This blog is not a cry for help," she wrote. "I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

This Camusian anti-logic instantly lighted a netwide fire. 90DayJane.com became a flash point, drawing hundreds of thousands of views, dozens of speculative blog posts and a string of comments so dripping with suspicion, abuse and even anger that it was clear Jane had hit a nerve before she ever picked up a razor blade.

This 24-year-old Los Angeles blogger says she's going to kill herself--and she wants you to help her plan it.

UPDATE: 90DayJane has pulled the plug. Her project was "a personal art piece," and "must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours."

Well, guess that's it then. Just when we had our magnifying glasses polished and our pipes nicely stoked...

This is either a very serious and unfunny situation where someone's young life is at stake, or--much, much, much more likely (given the precedent of pretty-young-women-in-trouble hoaxes), it's the latest envelope pushing net publicity stunt. 

"This blog is not a cry for help," writes 90 Day Jane in her blog's bio.  "Or even to get attention. It's simply a public record of my last 90 days in existence. I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

No, all you need is a sensational idea, some web savvy, and a crew of gullible web detectives to take the bait.  That latter element has been taken care of by myself and web myth buster extraordinaire Richard Rushfield, who led the charge in cracking the famous lonelygirl15 hoax.

So, as we digest our hook, line and sinker, let's go over what we know so far:

-- Basic info:  Jane is* 24, lives in Los Angeles, has family back east.  She is slim and attractive (see this partially NSFW YouTube vid of her trying on her dress for the "blessed day.")  She clearly knows how to edit video.  And she's going to stay anonymous and not grant any interviews. 

-- Other characters:  Guy at work she's going to go out on a Valentine's Day date with.  "I just hope he's not looking for anything long-term," she writes.  Clever, but suicidal?

-- Web clues:  The blog.  The video (where is this vintage clothing store?).  The Facebook profile and group. The strange bulletin board she plugs without explanation.  The picture of a Hollywood-adjacent location near her favorite Starbucks--can anyone give the precise intersection?

Let us know if we're being too skeptical--if anyone has any reason to believe this should be taken more seriously, we're all ears.  There have been Internet-related suicides before--including the recent and tragic case of 13-year-old Megan Meir, who killed herself after allegedly being bullied on MySpace by a friend's mother. 

90-day Jane may be 'riffing' on this unhappy trend.  But her take on suicide is so slick and glib, it's hard to think it's the real thing.

*here we use the 'to be' verb in the loosest possible sense.

Oh no! YouTube's 'Fred' is both shrill and a shill

Oh no, not again 

At the suggestion of commenter Mark, I took a second look at the YouTube phenomenon called "Fred" to see if he was really a lone teenage filmmaker. Or if he was the front boy for some cloaked entity bent Pied Piper-like on hypnotizing millions of children with "entertaining content," only to lure them into some commercial trap.  You know, like TV.

Well I admit it hadn't occurred to me that these Fred videos would need corporate backing to be produced. They sort of seem like, I don't know, a hyperactive 12-year-old kid made them.  But call me a fool, because a link in Fred's description box sends viewers to a flashy, expensive-looking website called fredonzipit.com.  ZipIt, it turns out, is a handheld instant-messaging device — presumably to allow kids to IM each other from the comfort of their living room couch, kitchen table, desk at school, or anywhere else.  Because God forbid we should teach our kids that it's OK to go 90 seconds without filling in koolguyT0mmy94 or s1st3rSarah on your activities over the last 90 seconds, and go read a book instead.

So yes, I'm waiting for a call-back from Zipit themselves*, but I think we can go ahead and call this another viral marketing ploy.  And no point distinguishing ZipIt from the legion of other tchotchke peddlers that have been selling kids stuff they don't need since Moses was a tween.  Kids are such a big part of the YouTube demographic that this had to happen eventually.  It's just ... really with the chipmunk voice?

UPDATE (5:01pm): The truth is somewhere in between.  As it turns out, Fred—whose real name is Lucas Cruikshank—has been making amateur videos for some time, many of them with his two cousins.  Cruikshank was scouted by an L.A.-based ad firm looking for the next tween thing to anchor the launch of the Zipit product.  “Fred’s huge online following among teens and tweens, and their passion for the character, was just the magic bullet we were looking for in creating a new campaign for Zipit,” said David Abehsera, the President of WOO Agency, in a statement.  More details upcoming in a later post...

The makers of the viral videos showing friends in three countries using the death rays from their cellphones to pop popcorn are, unsurprisingly, fakes. (Gawker mostly shot the videos down on Monday).

The maker of the videos has come forward today to admit the hoax and claim its viral prize: repeated mentions of its company's name in the media and blogosphere. And if you get your video to the top of the viral charts, I guess you earn it, right? Cardo Systems makes high-end Bluetooth headsets (the joke being, I guess, that if you use their product, your brain won't get cooked by your cellphone). 

Here's one of the new videos with the advertisement appended. Enjoy, hands-free!

This seeming geometric paradox is making the rounds on Digg right now.  If you're skeptical about how 64 can equal 65, you need only read the explanation (and use the interactive Applet) here. Wow, I have neither read nor used the word Applet in several years. Takes me back to a simpler but less efficient time.

Click the drawing at left to watch.

CNN's News to Me program has selected Web Scout's UFO Hoax story as one of its favorites stories of the last year, to be included in its one-year anniversary show in a few weeks.

They've got a contest in which readers select their favorite from the list of nominees (you can also watch the UFO segment that ran on CNN here).

This is not a shameless appeal to readers to vote for my story. I urge you to choose your favorite from the slate -- and there are some pretty neat ones, including the now-famous Post Secret and the Exploding Whale. May the best candidate win.

As it stands, Tuxedo Travels, the story of two men traveling the world to save humanity wearing tuxedos, has 95% of the vote. And even though it looks like only a few people have voted, deficits like that are notoriously difficult to overcome.

According to FishBowlNY, the NYT's piece on the Rickrolling of an Eastern Washington University hoops game a few weeks ago was apparently based on, er, some dubious evidence. In other words, some guy made it all up.  I cited the NYT's story in my RickRoll piece from yesterday, and even watched the video, so no fair playing the neener game, but ...

If the video was really the only source for the story, that might be classified as a bit of an oopsie, not just because everything on the Internet is a hoax until proven otherwise, but because the video indeed looks like it was heavily edited, set to music, etc -- not a document but a piece of entertainment. 

And so it was ...

I received this e-mail after my story about trying to find 90DayJane went online last week. See the story here. In the letter below, the author of the controversial, short-lived 90DayJane blog reflects on the nature of fame, vows she won't reveal her identity and muses on whether she'll ever do anything as "big" as 90DayJane. A couple of sentences from the letter have been editorially redacted.

Hi David,

Please know that if I were not paranoid about my online security and anonymity I'm sure someone would have found me. It seems to have become a fun challenge to some warez people.

The thing about fame (I think) is that no one ever gets to choose what they are "famous" for. Unlike being respected in a chosen profession or achieving some great feat, fame is a simple situation wherein someone has managed to get to the top of the "cultural dog pile" (your words). People don't get to choose how the public perceives them and they can spend a lot of time and money trying to change that perception. By keeping my identity away from 90DayJane, I get to skip all of that.

This is the story of how I lost Jane before I ever found her.

"I am going to kill myself in 90 days," she wrote on her diary at 90dayjane.com on Feb. 5. "What else should I say?"

Jane was young -- 24. She lived in L.A., had even put up a shot of her favorite local Starbucks, the Hollywood sign in the background. Her bio photo showed a pretty brunet, hair draped across her eyes, like a closing curtain. The blog's macabre signature was an image of a young woman's wrists, apparently tattooed with neat lines. Cut here.

"This blog is not a cry for help," she wrote. "I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

This Camusian anti-logic instantly lighted a netwide fire. 90DayJane.com became a flash point, drawing hundreds of thousands of views, dozens of speculative blog posts and a string of comments so dripping with suspicion, abuse and even anger that it was clear Jane had hit a nerve before she ever picked up a razor blade.

This 24-year-old Los Angeles blogger says she's going to kill herself--and she wants you to help her plan it.

UPDATE: 90DayJane has pulled the plug. Her project was "a personal art piece," and "must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours."

Well, guess that's it then. Just when we had our magnifying glasses polished and our pipes nicely stoked...

This is either a very serious and unfunny situation where someone's young life is at stake, or--much, much, much more likely (given the precedent of pretty-young-women-in-trouble hoaxes), it's the latest envelope pushing net publicity stunt. 

"This blog is not a cry for help," writes 90 Day Jane in her blog's bio.  "Or even to get attention. It's simply a public record of my last 90 days in existence. I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

No, all you need is a sensational idea, some web savvy, and a crew of gullible web detectives to take the bait.  That latter element has been taken care of by myself and web myth buster extraordinaire Richard Rushfield, who led the charge in cracking the famous lonelygirl15 hoax.

So, as we digest our hook, line and sinker, let's go over what we know so far:

-- Basic info:  Jane is* 24, lives in Los Angeles, has family back east.  She is slim and attractive (see this partially NSFW YouTube vid of her trying on her dress for the "blessed day.")  She clearly knows how to edit video.  And she's going to stay anonymous and not grant any interviews. 

-- Other characters:  Guy at work she's going to go out on a Valentine's Day date with.  "I just hope he's not looking for anything long-term," she writes.  Clever, but suicidal?

-- Web clues:  The blog.  The video (where is this vintage clothing store?).  The Facebook profile and group. The strange bulletin board she plugs without explanation.  The picture of a Hollywood-adjacent location near her favorite Starbucks--can anyone give the precise intersection?

Let us know if we're being too skeptical--if anyone has any reason to believe this should be taken more seriously, we're all ears.  There have been Internet-related suicides before--including the recent and tragic case of 13-year-old Megan Meir, who killed herself after allegedly being bullied on MySpace by a friend's mother. 

90-day Jane may be 'riffing' on this unhappy trend.  But her take on suicide is so slick and glib, it's hard to think it's the real thing.

*here we use the 'to be' verb in the loosest possible sense.

Cellphone popcorn videos are fakes, maker says

The makers of the viral videos showing friends in three countries using the death rays from their cellphones to pop popcorn are, unsurprisingly, fakes. (Gawker mostly shot the videos down on Monday).

The maker of the videos has come forward today to admit the hoax and claim its viral prize: repeated mentions of its company's name in the media and blogosphere. And if you get your video to the top of the viral charts, I guess you earn it, right? Cardo Systems makes high-end Bluetooth headsets (the joke being, I guess, that if you use their product, your brain won't get cooked by your cellphone). 

Here's one of the new videos with the advertisement appended. Enjoy, hands-free!

This seeming geometric paradox is making the rounds on Digg right now.  If you're skeptical about how 64 can equal 65, you need only read the explanation (and use the interactive Applet) here. Wow, I have neither read nor used the word Applet in several years. Takes me back to a simpler but less efficient time.

Click the drawing at left to watch.

CNN's News to Me program has selected Web Scout's UFO Hoax story as one of its favorites stories of the last year, to be included in its one-year anniversary show in a few weeks.

They've got a contest in which readers select their favorite from the list of nominees (you can also watch the UFO segment that ran on CNN here).

This is not a shameless appeal to readers to vote for my story. I urge you to choose your favorite from the slate -- and there are some pretty neat ones, including the now-famous Post Secret and the Exploding Whale. May the best candidate win.

As it stands, Tuxedo Travels, the story of two men traveling the world to save humanity wearing tuxedos, has 95% of the vote. And even though it looks like only a few people have voted, deficits like that are notoriously difficult to overcome.

According to FishBowlNY, the NYT's piece on the Rickrolling of an Eastern Washington University hoops game a few weeks ago was apparently based on, er, some dubious evidence. In other words, some guy made it all up.  I cited the NYT's story in my RickRoll piece from yesterday, and even watched the video, so no fair playing the neener game, but ...

If the video was really the only source for the story, that might be classified as a bit of an oopsie, not just because everything on the Internet is a hoax until proven otherwise, but because the video indeed looks like it was heavily edited, set to music, etc -- not a document but a piece of entertainment. 

And so it was ...

I received this e-mail after my story about trying to find 90DayJane went online last week. See the story here. In the letter below, the author of the controversial, short-lived 90DayJane blog reflects on the nature of fame, vows she won't reveal her identity and muses on whether she'll ever do anything as "big" as 90DayJane. A couple of sentences from the letter have been editorially redacted.

Hi David,

Please know that if I were not paranoid about my online security and anonymity I'm sure someone would have found me. It seems to have become a fun challenge to some warez people.

The thing about fame (I think) is that no one ever gets to choose what they are "famous" for. Unlike being respected in a chosen profession or achieving some great feat, fame is a simple situation wherein someone has managed to get to the top of the "cultural dog pile" (your words). People don't get to choose how the public perceives them and they can spend a lot of time and money trying to change that perception. By keeping my identity away from 90DayJane, I get to skip all of that.

This is the story of how I lost Jane before I ever found her.

"I am going to kill myself in 90 days," she wrote on her diary at 90dayjane.com on Feb. 5. "What else should I say?"

Jane was young -- 24. She lived in L.A., had even put up a shot of her favorite local Starbucks, the Hollywood sign in the background. Her bio photo showed a pretty brunet, hair draped across her eyes, like a closing curtain. The blog's macabre signature was an image of a young woman's wrists, apparently tattooed with neat lines. Cut here.

"This blog is not a cry for help," she wrote. "I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

This Camusian anti-logic instantly lighted a netwide fire. 90DayJane.com became a flash point, drawing hundreds of thousands of views, dozens of speculative blog posts and a string of comments so dripping with suspicion, abuse and even anger that it was clear Jane had hit a nerve before she ever picked up a razor blade.

This 24-year-old Los Angeles blogger says she's going to kill herself--and she wants you to help her plan it.

UPDATE: 90DayJane has pulled the plug. Her project was "a personal art piece," and "must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours."

Well, guess that's it then. Just when we had our magnifying glasses polished and our pipes nicely stoked...

This is either a very serious and unfunny situation where someone's young life is at stake, or--much, much, much more likely (given the precedent of pretty-young-women-in-trouble hoaxes), it's the latest envelope pushing net publicity stunt. 

"This blog is not a cry for help," writes 90 Day Jane in her blog's bio.  "Or even to get attention. It's simply a public record of my last 90 days in existence. I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

No, all you need is a sensational idea, some web savvy, and a crew of gullible web detectives to take the bait.  That latter element has been taken care of by myself and web myth buster extraordinaire Richard Rushfield, who led the charge in cracking the famous lonelygirl15 hoax.

So, as we digest our hook, line and sinker, let's go over what we know so far:

-- Basic info:  Jane is* 24, lives in Los Angeles, has family back east.  She is slim and attractive (see this partially NSFW YouTube vid of her trying on her dress for the "blessed day.")  She clearly knows how to edit video.  And she's going to stay anonymous and not grant any interviews. 

-- Other characters:  Guy at work she's going to go out on a Valentine's Day date with.  "I just hope he's not looking for anything long-term," she writes.  Clever, but suicidal?

-- Web clues:  The blog.  The video (where is this vintage clothing store?).  The Facebook profile and group. The strange bulletin board she plugs without explanation.  The picture of a Hollywood-adjacent location near her favorite Starbucks--can anyone give the precise intersection?

Let us know if we're being too skeptical--if anyone has any reason to believe this should be taken more seriously, we're all ears.  There have been Internet-related suicides before--including the recent and tragic case of 13-year-old Megan Meir, who killed herself after allegedly being bullied on MySpace by a friend's mother. 

90-day Jane may be 'riffing' on this unhappy trend.  But her take on suicide is so slick and glib, it's hard to think it's the real thing.

*here we use the 'to be' verb in the loosest possible sense.

From the Digg files: fun with plane dissection

This seeming geometric paradox is making the rounds on Digg right now.  If you're skeptical about how 64 can equal 65, you need only read the explanation (and use the interactive Applet) here. Wow, I have neither read nor used the word Applet in several years. Takes me back to a simpler but less efficient time.

Click the drawing at left to watch.

CNN's News to Me program has selected Web Scout's UFO Hoax story as one of its favorites stories of the last year, to be included in its one-year anniversary show in a few weeks.

They've got a contest in which readers select their favorite from the list of nominees (you can also watch the UFO segment that ran on CNN here).

This is not a shameless appeal to readers to vote for my story. I urge you to choose your favorite from the slate -- and there are some pretty neat ones, including the now-famous Post Secret and the Exploding Whale. May the best candidate win.

As it stands, Tuxedo Travels, the story of two men traveling the world to save humanity wearing tuxedos, has 95% of the vote. And even though it looks like only a few people have voted, deficits like that are notoriously difficult to overcome.

According to FishBowlNY, the NYT's piece on the Rickrolling of an Eastern Washington University hoops game a few weeks ago was apparently based on, er, some dubious evidence. In other words, some guy made it all up.  I cited the NYT's story in my RickRoll piece from yesterday, and even watched the video, so no fair playing the neener game, but ...

If the video was really the only source for the story, that might be classified as a bit of an oopsie, not just because everything on the Internet is a hoax until proven otherwise, but because the video indeed looks like it was heavily edited, set to music, etc -- not a document but a piece of entertainment. 

And so it was ...

I received this e-mail after my story about trying to find 90DayJane went online last week. See the story here. In the letter below, the author of the controversial, short-lived 90DayJane blog reflects on the nature of fame, vows she won't reveal her identity and muses on whether she'll ever do anything as "big" as 90DayJane. A couple of sentences from the letter have been editorially redacted.

Hi David,

Please know that if I were not paranoid about my online security and anonymity I'm sure someone would have found me. It seems to have become a fun challenge to some warez people.

The thing about fame (I think) is that no one ever gets to choose what they are "famous" for. Unlike being respected in a chosen profession or achieving some great feat, fame is a simple situation wherein someone has managed to get to the top of the "cultural dog pile" (your words). People don't get to choose how the public perceives them and they can spend a lot of time and money trying to change that perception. By keeping my identity away from 90DayJane, I get to skip all of that.

This is the story of how I lost Jane before I ever found her.

"I am going to kill myself in 90 days," she wrote on her diary at 90dayjane.com on Feb. 5. "What else should I say?"

Jane was young -- 24. She lived in L.A., had even put up a shot of her favorite local Starbucks, the Hollywood sign in the background. Her bio photo showed a pretty brunet, hair draped across her eyes, like a closing curtain. The blog's macabre signature was an image of a young woman's wrists, apparently tattooed with neat lines. Cut here.

"This blog is not a cry for help," she wrote. "I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

This Camusian anti-logic instantly lighted a netwide fire. 90DayJane.com became a flash point, drawing hundreds of thousands of views, dozens of speculative blog posts and a string of comments so dripping with suspicion, abuse and even anger that it was clear Jane had hit a nerve before she ever picked up a razor blade.

This 24-year-old Los Angeles blogger says she's going to kill herself--and she wants you to help her plan it.

UPDATE: 90DayJane has pulled the plug. Her project was "a personal art piece," and "must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours."

Well, guess that's it then. Just when we had our magnifying glasses polished and our pipes nicely stoked...

This is either a very serious and unfunny situation where someone's young life is at stake, or--much, much, much more likely (given the precedent of pretty-young-women-in-trouble hoaxes), it's the latest envelope pushing net publicity stunt. 

"This blog is not a cry for help," writes 90 Day Jane in her blog's bio.  "Or even to get attention. It's simply a public record of my last 90 days in existence. I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

No, all you need is a sensational idea, some web savvy, and a crew of gullible web detectives to take the bait.  That latter element has been taken care of by myself and web myth buster extraordinaire Richard Rushfield, who led the charge in cracking the famous lonelygirl15 hoax.

So, as we digest our hook, line and sinker, let's go over what we know so far:

-- Basic info:  Jane is* 24, lives in Los Angeles, has family back east.  She is slim and attractive (see this partially NSFW YouTube vid of her trying on her dress for the "blessed day.")  She clearly knows how to edit video.  And she's going to stay anonymous and not grant any interviews. 

-- Other characters:  Guy at work she's going to go out on a Valentine's Day date with.  "I just hope he's not looking for anything long-term," she writes.  Clever, but suicidal?

-- Web clues:  The blog.  The video (where is this vintage clothing store?).  The Facebook profile and group. The strange bulletin board she plugs without explanation.  The picture of a Hollywood-adjacent location near her favorite Starbucks--can anyone give the precise intersection?

Let us know if we're being too skeptical--if anyone has any reason to believe this should be taken more seriously, we're all ears.  There have been Internet-related suicides before--including the recent and tragic case of 13-year-old Megan Meir, who killed herself after allegedly being bullied on MySpace by a friend's mother. 

90-day Jane may be 'riffing' on this unhappy trend.  But her take on suicide is so slick and glib, it's hard to think it's the real thing.

*here we use the 'to be' verb in the loosest possible sense.

UFO story on CNN's 2007 'News to Me' contest

CNN's News to Me program has selected Web Scout's UFO Hoax story as one of its favorites stories of the last year, to be included in its one-year anniversary show in a few weeks.

They've got a contest in which readers select their favorite from the list of nominees (you can also watch the UFO segment that ran on CNN here).

This is not a shameless appeal to readers to vote for my story. I urge you to choose your favorite from the slate -- and there are some pretty neat ones, including the now-famous Post Secret and the Exploding Whale. May the best candidate win.

As it stands, Tuxedo Travels, the story of two men traveling the world to save humanity wearing tuxedos, has 95% of the vote. And even though it looks like only a few people have voted, deficits like that are notoriously difficult to overcome.

According to FishBowlNY, the NYT's piece on the Rickrolling of an Eastern Washington University hoops game a few weeks ago was apparently based on, er, some dubious evidence. In other words, some guy made it all up.  I cited the NYT's story in my RickRoll piece from yesterday, and even watched the video, so no fair playing the neener game, but ...

If the video was really the only source for the story, that might be classified as a bit of an oopsie, not just because everything on the Internet is a hoax until proven otherwise, but because the video indeed looks like it was heavily edited, set to music, etc -- not a document but a piece of entertainment. 

And so it was ...

I received this e-mail after my story about trying to find 90DayJane went online last week. See the story here. In the letter below, the author of the controversial, short-lived 90DayJane blog reflects on the nature of fame, vows she won't reveal her identity and muses on whether she'll ever do anything as "big" as 90DayJane. A couple of sentences from the letter have been editorially redacted.

Hi David,

Please know that if I were not paranoid about my online security and anonymity I'm sure someone would have found me. It seems to have become a fun challenge to some warez people.

The thing about fame (I think) is that no one ever gets to choose what they are "famous" for. Unlike being respected in a chosen profession or achieving some great feat, fame is a simple situation wherein someone has managed to get to the top of the "cultural dog pile" (your words). People don't get to choose how the public perceives them and they can spend a lot of time and money trying to change that perception. By keeping my identity away from 90DayJane, I get to skip all of that.

This is the story of how I lost Jane before I ever found her.

"I am going to kill myself in 90 days," she wrote on her diary at 90dayjane.com on Feb. 5. "What else should I say?"

Jane was young -- 24. She lived in L.A., had even put up a shot of her favorite local Starbucks, the Hollywood sign in the background. Her bio photo showed a pretty brunet, hair draped across her eyes, like a closing curtain. The blog's macabre signature was an image of a young woman's wrists, apparently tattooed with neat lines. Cut here.

"This blog is not a cry for help," she wrote. "I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

This Camusian anti-logic instantly lighted a netwide fire. 90DayJane.com became a flash point, drawing hundreds of thousands of views, dozens of speculative blog posts and a string of comments so dripping with suspicion, abuse and even anger that it was clear Jane had hit a nerve before she ever picked up a razor blade.

This 24-year-old Los Angeles blogger says she's going to kill herself--and she wants you to help her plan it.

UPDATE: 90DayJane has pulled the plug. Her project was "a personal art piece," and "must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours."

Well, guess that's it then. Just when we had our magnifying glasses polished and our pipes nicely stoked...

This is either a very serious and unfunny situation where someone's young life is at stake, or--much, much, much more likely (given the precedent of pretty-young-women-in-trouble hoaxes), it's the latest envelope pushing net publicity stunt. 

"This blog is not a cry for help," writes 90 Day Jane in her blog's bio.  "Or even to get attention. It's simply a public record of my last 90 days in existence. I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

No, all you need is a sensational idea, some web savvy, and a crew of gullible web detectives to take the bait.  That latter element has been taken care of by myself and web myth buster extraordinaire Richard Rushfield, who led the charge in cracking the famous lonelygirl15 hoax.

So, as we digest our hook, line and sinker, let's go over what we know so far:

-- Basic info:  Jane is* 24, lives in Los Angeles, has family back east.  She is slim and attractive (see this partially NSFW YouTube vid of her trying on her dress for the "blessed day.")  She clearly knows how to edit video.  And she's going to stay anonymous and not grant any interviews. 

-- Other characters:  Guy at work she's going to go out on a Valentine's Day date with.  "I just hope he's not looking for anything long-term," she writes.  Clever, but suicidal?

-- Web clues:  The blog.  The video (where is this vintage clothing store?).  The Facebook profile and group. The strange bulletin board she plugs without explanation.  The picture of a Hollywood-adjacent location near her favorite Starbucks--can anyone give the precise intersection?

Let us know if we're being too skeptical--if anyone has any reason to believe this should be taken more seriously, we're all ears.  There have been Internet-related suicides before--including the recent and tragic case of 13-year-old Megan Meir, who killed herself after allegedly being bullied on MySpace by a friend's mother. 

90-day Jane may be 'riffing' on this unhappy trend.  But her take on suicide is so slick and glib, it's hard to think it's the real thing.

*here we use the 'to be' verb in the loosest possible sense.

NYT (and me by proxy, sorta) get TRickrolled

According to FishBowlNY, the NYT's piece on the Rickrolling of an Eastern Washington University hoops game a few weeks ago was apparently based on, er, some dubious evidence. In other words, some guy made it all up.  I cited the NYT's story in my RickRoll piece from yesterday, and even watched the video, so no fair playing the neener game, but ...

If the video was really the only source for the story, that might be classified as a bit of an oopsie, not just because everything on the Internet is a hoax until proven otherwise, but because the video indeed looks like it was heavily edited, set to music, etc -- not a document but a piece of entertainment. 

And so it was ...

I received this e-mail after my story about trying to find 90DayJane went online last week. See the story here. In the letter below, the author of the controversial, short-lived 90DayJane blog reflects on the nature of fame, vows she won't reveal her identity and muses on whether she'll ever do anything as "big" as 90DayJane. A couple of sentences from the letter have been editorially redacted.

Hi David,

Please know that if I were not paranoid about my online security and anonymity I'm sure someone would have found me. It seems to have become a fun challenge to some warez people.

The thing about fame (I think) is that no one ever gets to choose what they are "famous" for. Unlike being respected in a chosen profession or achieving some great feat, fame is a simple situation wherein someone has managed to get to the top of the "cultural dog pile" (your words). People don't get to choose how the public perceives them and they can spend a lot of time and money trying to change that perception. By keeping my identity away from 90DayJane, I get to skip all of that.

This is the story of how I lost Jane before I ever found her.

"I am going to kill myself in 90 days," she wrote on her diary at 90dayjane.com on Feb. 5. "What else should I say?"

Jane was young -- 24. She lived in L.A., had even put up a shot of her favorite local Starbucks, the Hollywood sign in the background. Her bio photo showed a pretty brunet, hair draped across her eyes, like a closing curtain. The blog's macabre signature was an image of a young woman's wrists, apparently tattooed with neat lines. Cut here.

"This blog is not a cry for help," she wrote. "I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

This Camusian anti-logic instantly lighted a netwide fire. 90DayJane.com became a flash point, drawing hundreds of thousands of views, dozens of speculative blog posts and a string of comments so dripping with suspicion, abuse and even anger that it was clear Jane had hit a nerve before she ever picked up a razor blade.

This 24-year-old Los Angeles blogger says she's going to kill herself--and she wants you to help her plan it.

UPDATE: 90DayJane has pulled the plug. Her project was "a personal art piece," and "must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours."

Well, guess that's it then. Just when we had our magnifying glasses polished and our pipes nicely stoked...

This is either a very serious and unfunny situation where someone's young life is at stake, or--much, much, much more likely (given the precedent of pretty-young-women-in-trouble hoaxes), it's the latest envelope pushing net publicity stunt. 

"This blog is not a cry for help," writes 90 Day Jane in her blog's bio.  "Or even to get attention. It's simply a public record of my last 90 days in existence. I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

No, all you need is a sensational idea, some web savvy, and a crew of gullible web detectives to take the bait.  That latter element has been taken care of by myself and web myth buster extraordinaire Richard Rushfield, who led the charge in cracking the famous lonelygirl15 hoax.

So, as we digest our hook, line and sinker, let's go over what we know so far:

-- Basic info:  Jane is* 24, lives in Los Angeles, has family back east.  She is slim and attractive (see this partially NSFW YouTube vid of her trying on her dress for the "blessed day.")  She clearly knows how to edit video.  And she's going to stay anonymous and not grant any interviews. 

-- Other characters:  Guy at work she's going to go out on a Valentine's Day date with.  "I just hope he's not looking for anything long-term," she writes.  Clever, but suicidal?

-- Web clues:  The blog.  The video (where is this vintage clothing store?).  The Facebook profile and group. The strange bulletin board she plugs without explanation.  The picture of a Hollywood-adjacent location near her favorite Starbucks--can anyone give the precise intersection?

Let us know if we're being too skeptical--if anyone has any reason to believe this should be taken more seriously, we're all ears.  There have been Internet-related suicides before--including the recent and tragic case of 13-year-old Megan Meir, who killed herself after allegedly being bullied on MySpace by a friend's mother. 

90-day Jane may be 'riffing' on this unhappy trend.  But her take on suicide is so slick and glib, it's hard to think it's the real thing.

*here we use the 'to be' verb in the loosest possible sense.

Suicide 'artist' 90DayJane writes back

I received this e-mail after my story about trying to find 90DayJane went online last week. See the story here. In the letter below, the author of the controversial, short-lived 90DayJane blog reflects on the nature of fame, vows she won't reveal her identity and muses on whether she'll ever do anything as "big" as 90DayJane. A couple of sentences from the letter have been editorially redacted.

Hi David,

Please know that if I were not paranoid about my online security and anonymity I'm sure someone would have found me. It seems to have become a fun challenge to some warez people.

The thing about fame (I think) is that no one ever gets to choose what they are "famous" for. Unlike being respected in a chosen profession or achieving some great feat, fame is a simple situation wherein someone has managed to get to the top of the "cultural dog pile" (your words). People don't get to choose how the public perceives them and they can spend a lot of time and money trying to change that perception. By keeping my identity away from 90DayJane, I get to skip all of that.

This is the story of how I lost Jane before I ever found her.

"I am going to kill myself in 90 days," she wrote on her diary at 90dayjane.com on Feb. 5. "What else should I say?"

Jane was young -- 24. She lived in L.A., had even put up a shot of her favorite local Starbucks, the Hollywood sign in the background. Her bio photo showed a pretty brunet, hair draped across her eyes, like a closing curtain. The blog's macabre signature was an image of a young woman's wrists, apparently tattooed with neat lines. Cut here.

"This blog is not a cry for help," she wrote. "I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

This Camusian anti-logic instantly lighted a netwide fire. 90DayJane.com became a flash point, drawing hundreds of thousands of views, dozens of speculative blog posts and a string of comments so dripping with suspicion, abuse and even anger that it was clear Jane had hit a nerve before she ever picked up a razor blade.

This 24-year-old Los Angeles blogger says she's going to kill herself--and she wants you to help her plan it.

UPDATE: 90DayJane has pulled the plug. Her project was "a personal art piece," and "must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours."

Well, guess that's it then. Just when we had our magnifying glasses polished and our pipes nicely stoked...

This is either a very serious and unfunny situation where someone's young life is at stake, or--much, much, much more likely (given the precedent of pretty-young-women-in-trouble hoaxes), it's the latest envelope pushing net publicity stunt. 

"This blog is not a cry for help," writes 90 Day Jane in her blog's bio.  "Or even to get attention. It's simply a public record of my last 90 days in existence. I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

No, all you need is a sensational idea, some web savvy, and a crew of gullible web detectives to take the bait.  That latter element has been taken care of by myself and web myth buster extraordinaire Richard Rushfield, who led the charge in cracking the famous lonelygirl15 hoax.

So, as we digest our hook, line and sinker, let's go over what we know so far:

-- Basic info:  Jane is* 24, lives in Los Angeles, has family back east.  She is slim and attractive (see this partially NSFW YouTube vid of her trying on her dress for the "blessed day.")  She clearly knows how to edit video.  And she's going to stay anonymous and not grant any interviews. 

-- Other characters:  Guy at work she's going to go out on a Valentine's Day date with.  "I just hope he's not looking for anything long-term," she writes.  Clever, but suicidal?

-- Web clues:  The blog.  The video (where is this vintage clothing store?).  The Facebook profile and group. The strange bulletin board she plugs without explanation.  The picture of a Hollywood-adjacent location near her favorite Starbucks--can anyone give the precise intersection?

Let us know if we're being too skeptical--if anyone has any reason to believe this should be taken more seriously, we're all ears.  There have been Internet-related suicides before--including the recent and tragic case of 13-year-old Megan Meir, who killed herself after allegedly being bullied on MySpace by a friend's mother. 

90-day Jane may be 'riffing' on this unhappy trend.  But her take on suicide is so slick and glib, it's hard to think it's the real thing.

*here we use the 'to be' verb in the loosest possible sense.

From the Sunday Calendar: 90DayJane and Me

This is the story of how I lost Jane before I ever found her.

"I am going to kill myself in 90 days," she wrote on her diary at 90dayjane.com on Feb. 5. "What else should I say?"

Jane was young -- 24. She lived in L.A., had even put up a shot of her favorite local Starbucks, the Hollywood sign in the background. Her bio photo showed a pretty brunet, hair draped across her eyes, like a closing curtain. The blog's macabre signature was an image of a young woman's wrists, apparently tattooed with neat lines. Cut here.

"This blog is not a cry for help," she wrote. "I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

This Camusian anti-logic instantly lighted a netwide fire. 90DayJane.com became a flash point, drawing hundreds of thousands of views, dozens of speculative blog posts and a string of comments so dripping with suspicion, abuse and even anger that it was clear Jane had hit a nerve before she ever picked up a razor blade.

This 24-year-old Los Angeles blogger says she's going to kill herself--and she wants you to help her plan it.

UPDATE: 90DayJane has pulled the plug. Her project was "a personal art piece," and "must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours."

Well, guess that's it then. Just when we had our magnifying glasses polished and our pipes nicely stoked...

This is either a very serious and unfunny situation where someone's young life is at stake, or--much, much, much more likely (given the precedent of pretty-young-women-in-trouble hoaxes), it's the latest envelope pushing net publicity stunt. 

"This blog is not a cry for help," writes 90 Day Jane in her blog's bio.  "Or even to get attention. It's simply a public record of my last 90 days in existence. I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

No, all you need is a sensational idea, some web savvy, and a crew of gullible web detectives to take the bait.  That latter element has been taken care of by myself and web myth buster extraordinaire Richard Rushfield, who led the charge in cracking the famous lonelygirl15 hoax.

So, as we digest our hook, line and sinker, let's go over what we know so far:

-- Basic info:  Jane is* 24, lives in Los Angeles, has family back east.  She is slim and attractive (see this partially NSFW YouTube vid of her trying on her dress for the "blessed day.")  She clearly knows how to edit video.  And she's going to stay anonymous and not grant any interviews. 

-- Other characters:  Guy at work she's going to go out on a Valentine's Day date with.  "I just hope he's not looking for anything long-term," she writes.  Clever, but suicidal?

-- Web clues:  The blog.  The video (where is this vintage clothing store?).  The Facebook profile and group. The strange bulletin board she plugs without explanation.  The picture of a Hollywood-adjacent location near her favorite Starbucks--can anyone give the precise intersection?

Let us know if we're being too skeptical--if anyone has any reason to believe this should be taken more seriously, we're all ears.  There have been Internet-related suicides before--including the recent and tragic case of 13-year-old Megan Meir, who killed herself after allegedly being bullied on MySpace by a friend's mother. 

90-day Jane may be 'riffing' on this unhappy trend.  But her take on suicide is so slick and glib, it's hard to think it's the real thing.

*here we use the 'to be' verb in the loosest possible sense.

HOAX UPDATE: I'm going to kill myself in 90 days

This 24-year-old Los Angeles blogger says she's going to kill herself--and she wants you to help her plan it.

UPDATE: 90DayJane has pulled the plug. Her project was "a personal art piece," and "must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours."

Well, guess that's it then. Just when we had our magnifying glasses polished and our pipes nicely stoked...

This is either a very serious and unfunny situation where someone's young life is at stake, or--much, much, much more likely (given the precedent of pretty-young-women-in-trouble hoaxes), it's the latest envelope pushing net publicity stunt. 

"This blog is not a cry for help," writes 90 Day Jane in her blog's bio.  "Or even to get attention. It's simply a public record of my last 90 days in existence. I'm not depressed and nothing extremely horrible has lead me to this decision. But, does it really have to?"

No, all you need is a sensational idea, some web savvy, and a crew of gullible web detectives to take the bait.  That latter element has been taken care of by myself and web myth buster extraordinaire Richard Rushfield, who led the charge in cracking the famous lonelygirl15 hoax.

So, as we digest our hook, line and sinker, let's go over what we know so far:

-- Basic info:  Jane is* 24, lives in Los Angeles, has family back east.  She is slim and attractive (see this partially NSFW YouTube vid of her trying on her dress for the "blessed day.")  She clearly knows how to edit video.  And she's going to stay anonymous and not grant any interviews. 

-- Other characters:  Guy at work she's going to go out on a Valentine's Day date with.  "I just hope he's not looking for anything long-term," she writes.  Clever, but suicidal?

-- Web clues:  The blog.  The video (where is this vintage clothing store?).  The Facebook profile and group. The strange bulletin board she plugs without explanation.  The picture of a Hollywood-adjacent location near her favorite Starbucks--can anyone give the precise intersection?

Let us know if we're being too skeptical--if anyone has any reason to believe this should be taken more seriously, we're all ears.  There have been Internet-related suicides before--including the recent and tragic case of 13-year-old Megan Meir, who killed herself after allegedly being bullied on MySpace by a friend's mother. 

90-day Jane may be 'riffing' on this unhappy trend.  But her take on suicide is so slick and glib, it's hard to think it's the real thing.

*here we use the 'to be' verb in the loosest possible sense.