Anti-Spore Website Pulls Colossal Internet Prank
In the wake of Spore's launch last week, many people have come forward and given thieir arguments for and against the game. And none were louder against the game than the creator of the website Antispore.com. Claiming to be a Christian, the author railed against evolution and even proclaimed Wil Wright to be the ultimate evil. Needless to say he/she raised the ire of many a gamer who rushed to the website to flame the guy/gal through thousands of comments. It also sparked a huge debate about creation vs. evolution (big surprise).
Well, it turns out it was all a big joke on the comment trolls when it was revealed that the entire site was a hoax. In the latest entry on the site entitled "Understand my beliefs please," readers were greeted with this final paragraph...
But the Bible teaches us that God was not done with man. For we were His creation and He then spoke to Noah in Genesis 8:21-27 after the flood. "21. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never gonna give you up. 22. "Never gonna let you down." 23."Never gonna run around and desert you." 24. "Never gonna make you cry." 25. "Never gonna say goodbye." 26. "Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you." 27."Never truly believe anything you read on the Internet. There will always be cases of Poe's Law."
The concept of Poe's law is "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing." Apparently, this is quite true. This final post also proves something I have often said in the past, MANY PEOPLE DO NOT READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE BEFORE THEY POST COMMENTS. Unfortunately (for the commenter) this just makes the commenter look stupid to everyone who actually did read the entire article. You can see this in full force on the AntiSpore post where even though the author has revealed the joke, hundreds of people are STILL raking him/her over the coals for his/her (completely fake) Christian belief.
A very interesting experiment in many ways.
Fruit Brute
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 12 September 2008
· Comments (6)
Other stuff like this: antispore, creation, ea, evolution, hoax, spore
"Unfortunately this just makes the commenter look stupid to everyone who actually did read the entire article."
Unfortunately? I disagree... I think it is very fortunate that we have people giving others the opportunity to reveal themselves as the petty fools they are.
I had no idea Poe's law actually has a name, the idea was something I deduced when reading hard core satire when the anti-gay measure was big in my state. It is also why Stephen Colbert made me uncomfortable for a very long time; I knew there were people out there in the world who were actually like that (and people who watch his show unaware it is sarcastically satire). It makes me want to hide.
Unfortunately we're at a point where "tl;dr" ("too long; didn't read") has become as popular as other internet acronyms. Low attention span and poor reading comprehension are now being reinforced in spades. :(
I admit, I've posted comments without reading the whole thing, then went back and re-read the article/entry/whatever and had to go and apologize/erase my comment so I didn't look like an idiot. Not on that particular hoax site, though.
Frakn' great. I must admit i was a little confused for a second..... then I relized 'I've just been Rick'rolled'
Okay I posted before I read the whole thing so I guess I look stupid.
I'm okay with that.
I don't think it's really a problem with readers' attention spans. Actually the opposite. Most Christian fundamentalism is just a bunch of unoriginal nonsense. Anyone who has read the real thing knows they don't need to read more than one or two sentences to get the gist.
And I think it's even more stupid that according to recent polls, almost half of the U.S. population believes in creationism. Fake or not, this guy's website accurately represents an alarmingly substantial portion of our nation, as well as someone who very well could be our vice president and even our president.