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March 19, 2003

Blogs as Publicity Stunts
Posted by Jess in Tech Talk

Back in October, I stumbled upon 8march2003.com. It was a complicated story of governmental CIA-type secrets, complete with mysterious wording, strange letter-spacing and capitalization among the story. It contained photos of a broken camera, with the promise to post the "world changing photos" on March 8, 2003, once it was "safer."

Once word got out, panic spread in, leading Snopes.com to run a debunking story on it. It was later determined that it WAS indeed a publicity blog, by admittance of the site owner due to the influx of panic-stricken emails.

The site owner then reassured us that it WAS a publicity stunt complete with clues in the wording, posted the original site for anyone to see as a link at the bottom, and then kept going every few weeks adding more to the story.

March 8th came and went, and as promised, the pictures were posted along with a link to a new site (complete with the words "do not believe a word this site tells you...". The new site contained a different version of the story, along with a new date of confession, and this time a contest to see who could guess what was coming (book, movie, etc.)

If you check out the original site , you'll notice the author has posted the feedback he has gotten. While many of them contain disappointment that none of this is real, about 90% of them thank the author for giving them a little excitment to their daily routine, not to mention something to look forward to.

I personally can't wait until the item is released, knowing that I've been a part of the "backstory" months before anyone knew what it was. That said, I may have to kick a little ass if I find out its for Men In Black breakfast cereal or something like that...

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