UPDATE 1/30: Sharon over at Doubtful News has a great article on the history and effects of hoaxing here.
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An innocent young student in Edmonton, Alberta was shocked at how gullible people were in believing that the Conklin video was real. She decided the very best way to save us from our naivety was to create a hoax using the sound from the Conklin video. No irony there. In a nauseating article by Mike Ross entitled Strange Sounds in Edmonton Sky Part of Viral Phenomenon here, the young lady recounts in a question/answer session exactly how and why she did it. Seems to me Mr. Ross sensed this might not go over well and ends the article with:
“The idea that these videos might fake be isn’t the story here. It’s the 1.8 million views the Conklin video got (and more than 83,000 for the Gladue’s video). Any indie band with a music video would be over the moon to get this kind of traffic. It’s the kind of number that can make you famous.”
Does this mean that we should fool millions of people just to sell a movie or get our band noticed? She says:
“I made it because I was surprised at the attention the Conklin video was getting, and the friends on my Facebook friends list were voicing their fear, which I think is wrong.”
MORE AFTER THE JUMP…
She goes on to explain that she had nothing to do with uploading it to Youtube:
“I did not intend for the video to be uploaded to YouTube, at all. Some stranger who saw my video on a mutual friend’s Facebook page copied it to his computer and uploaded. Since seeing it uploaded I was at war with myself, torn between making him take it down or not.”
But she didn’t. She wanted to see how many hits she could get so she left it up. She says:
“I am a bit shocked and saddened that this is getting so much attention, when there are so many other important things going on in the world and deserves people’s attention.”
Noble intentions? The need to teach us a lesson?
One thing this blog has taught me is that people are by nature afraid. Some people are looking for a sign and they live their lives waiting for the blade to fall. I can hear their fear and anguish when I read the comments. When people commenting on videos express their fear of 2012 and how they don’t want to die my heart sinks. And yet they can’t look away. They don’t want things to be open ended and look for ways to predict our end. No one likes uncertainty.
The guys that made the Conklin video probably never expected it to cause so much fear. They can be forgiven. I’m not so sure I can forgive the copycats who were looking for a way to ride the wave to increase hits. It’s irresponsible and has real consequences. Who is to say that some unstable person out there saw one of these videos and was pushed over the edge. I myself did not create this blog for any reason other than it interested me. I am one of the people that was fooled initially. When I started to figure out Conklin was a fake it made me feel stupid and duped. I think anyone out there that has created a hoax should fess up so that we can hate you.
Some people take a completely different view of this behavior. From an article here by Sharon over at Doubtful News:
I applaud you, Claudine. While it was clear that this was a hoax of a hoax, you showed that your critical faculties were in the right place.
While I vehemently disagree with her, I respect her opinion. Thoughts?
i love it when irresponsible people try to justify their thoughtless behavior. agree with your views completely. why punish people for their inability to expertly judge real from fake? for having certain beliefs? it’s so sadistic. this might be a stretch but i think makers of such videos are just as guilty as people like harold camping for perpetuating myths that destroy lives and waste time.
what is worth more attention than the end of the world, for people who believe it to be true and believe the video to be real?
however i do think she did the right thing by coming forward, if indeed she only stands to gain hate and no true gain from all the attention her video has garnered. at least now we know for sure that particular video is fake. i only think she could have apologized with more sincerity and said, hey i was careless and bored, it was mean and i’m sorry.
Yes, because Harold Camping made money off of peoples fears and isn’t that sort of the same thing in creating hoaxes for money? Your last sentence sums it all up. No regret…just a spin that she meant well. It made me very angry.
I am fricken freaked out!
Since I wasnt able to reply to the whole subject, I’ll reply on this persons comment. . . . okay, soo everyone take a look at how many this person has debunked, what like 9? out of how many? -___- and its been a while now so if you are all taking a stand to say that they are just all fake no matter what just because a pinch of them were faked, what does that say about the rest? The likely hood that these noises are happening is 85 percent chance that they are real, you can go ahead and say “oh pfft, doomtards, when are they going to learn ” like an ignorant jack ass and pretend that they know everything without any proof. Like it or not, theres a lot going on , this year has significance like no other and we all know this, past claims that the world were to end, didnt make any sense at all, literally, but to just continue it when earthquakes, volcano activity, plate displacement, etc is happening at a steady pace, is just complete nonsense because its right there infront of our eyes but yet sit back while our world is collapsing saying ” its all a hoax” is bullshit.
here are some links for PROOF that our world is going to shit: TheUnitedKnowledge go look, filled with links, sources, documented data
Just wondering if you have seen this: http://seektress.com/ssounds.htm
I have and I find it useful. But the biggest problem I have is that they just stick all the videos on there without really analyzing them, including many I know are not real. It is a good source if you just want to see almost all that have been posted to YT.
“Some people are looking for a sign and they live their lives waiting for the blade to fall. I can hear their fear and anguish when I read the comments. When people commenting on videos express their fear of 2012 and how they don’t want to die my heart sinks. And yet they can’t look away. They don’t want things to be open ended and look for ways to predict our end. No one likes uncertainty.”
That’s human nature, it’s also the single #1 thing I HATE about the 2012 stuff — it’s all BS, but, not unlike the “strange sound” shenanigans, people are reinforced by others to believe it; and there are people, some of whom I deal with directly, who *are* so anxious about it that they think it would be better to end their lives themselves. It’s THAT serious, I kid you not. They literally have to go through deprogramming. THAT pisses me off to no end. People should not have to suffer because some douche bag wants to make a buck by selling a book about they “know” about the end of the world…..even when modern Maya elders and scholars vehemently disagree. The one 2012 claim I DO very much hope comes to pass is enlightenment. We need it. Bad.
“The guys that made the Conklin video probably never expected it to cause so much fear. They can be forgiven. I’m not so sure I can forgive the copycats who were looking for a way to ride the wave to increase hits. It’s irresponsible and has real consequences.”
You’re correct. The videos that *originally triggered the virus were found to be hoaxes. As more hoaxes followed, like the one described above, regular every day people *suddenly* began hearing things and posting their own videos. Odd, no? Natural or man-made, it’s likely that these sounds were something they had experienced many times before and never noticed until the idea was planted in their head to NOTICE them and to attribute them to some strange unknown origin. Others, like Oshawa, very likely to be mere coincidence; and then the small percentage that truly can be related to naturally occurring phenomenon. Throw in the usual cast of 2012′ers, UFO enthusiasts, uber-religious, and conspiracy theorists and it gets out of control. But, it is indeed a fascinating first hand observation of human behavior for folks like me. The internet has opened up a whole new world for psychological research.
A lesson that *should* (but won’t) be taken from this whole thing is personal responsibility. You never know how what you do or say – in life or online – is going to impact others…and it WILL impact them in some way, but most individuals have an ‘out of sight out of mind’ mentality. The girl from the article probably feels really bad about the whole thing and probably won’t ever do it again, but fact remains that she added to the hysteria, and someone, somewhere had to take a couple of extra xanax because of it.
Thanks Anne, I don’t disagree with anything you said.
The problem with hoaxes is that they divert attention from what could be a real phenomena. So far there are a few videos out there that seem to warrant more attention than any of these hoax videos, such as the North Battleford one:
http://saskatoon.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120124/sas-noisesnorth-120124/20120124/?hub=Saskatoon%20
For now, I’d rather give more attention to what might be real than what we now know isn’t, otherwise everyone will conclude that all strange sound reports are hoaxes – and as yet no one has demonstrated they are all hoaxes, like the one above.
Oh saskatoon is next.
They are definitely not all hoaxes.
@Darren Bracey
“The problem with hoaxes is that they divert attention from what could be a real phenomena.”
That is the problem. And there is also a possibility that some fakes are for that reason, assuming that there is a real phenomenon in the first place.
But this is not something you can ever be sure about, so filtering them is the only approach till you get to point to have a safe conclusion. Jay does a great job over here on that.
I DON’T agree with the girl making a copy cat version. I think it was completely stupid and pointless. And also insensitive to the millions of people out there who just want the simple truth, not tricked or sabotaged. What the heck is wrong with people? Its frightening enough to listen and watch these recordings but now SOME people out there want to make it even harder to come up with truthful answers. People who make fake videos like that really need to get a life. I mean really! Ugh
Wow… even after her admission and this article, the people posting on the original video (which was not uploaded by her, but by her ‘friend’) still has a couple people commenting on how they heard it too. Oy….
This is my fav: “For the tards below calling fake..I am sure folks all around the world have nothing better to do with thier time than try to work on a deviant synthesis that somehow “matches* all the other deviant synthesis created by other people- all working in conjunction on the SAME week AROUND the world- just to mess with your head. *rolls eyes*. I am sure that is it…. *nods* .”
- harleyq1000
Well, this Claudine girl didn’t have anything better to do apparently….
Thank you for posting this i know alot of people will appreciate this,
its a shame that there are so many fakes and im not going to lie but they are extremely good fakes,
Now that the hoax has been exploited there are alot of people on youtube showing how they did it!
But lets look at the positive here. The fakes provide a template too. Any good analysis of a phenom should include an expectation of forgeries. Archeology/anthropology has had to deal with this for centuries, why should this be any different?
The fact is, she didn’t reveal this as a fake, analysis by Jayman and others did. Fakes also give valuble information, as they provide a sharper contrast for those films that appear authentic. The more the faker’s methods are exposed, the easier it is to separate the wheat from the shaft.
“That is the problem. And there is also a possibility that some fakes are for that reason, assuming that there is a real phenomenon in the first place.
But this is not something you can ever be sure about, so filtering them is the only approach till you get to point to have a safe conclusion. Jay does a great job over here on that.”-
Agreed Panos.
Actually she did admit it to be a fake several days ago on youtube in a separate upload, and she apologized at that time as well. She stated the video had been stolen from her facebook and was never meant to be put on YT. The person who had originally posted it has not removed it, or made comment on it not being authentic (at least not at the time I last saw it).
Yes Anne, that correct, she did admit to the fake. But unless I am mistake, Jayman and others had already raised alarm bells over this one. Again, nice thing about this blog, most are attempting to be objective here and call a clown a clown. And posters underneith this video on YT are pointing out that its a fake as well.
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One thing i can’t understand is: why any scientist or expert tried to explain these sounds? I mean, if they are real and with the high solar activity nowadays, then these sounds could be a coleeral effect of the the solar activity and thus, is worth give some time to researching it. I mean,if they are really happening, that’s a little odd, don’t you agree ?
Rafael, I agree. I don’t know why this couldn’t be analyized like any other sound wave. Perhaps no ones taking it seriously due to the “oh, its all that 2012 nonsense, all fakes meant to scare the weak minded” etc.
I wish we could get someone who is an expert in sound waves interested in this. At least to determine if some of the sounds that appear real are just natural phenom (the earthquake idea intrigues me) or something man-made (wouldn’t it be good for us to know WHAT is making a noise so loud that it’s literally moving beds and shaking windows in some places?)
Hello My name is James Firman, and for the last few days my team have been sifting through all of the video clips using sound editing software hoping to find a plausible answer to this mystery. After drinking lots of coffee we came to the conclusion that, with the few exceptions that were faked almost all certainly recorded something!
So we took the Ukraine video as our test clip, removed the voices and increased the pitch and speed slightly then ran this through the computer, looking for any similar wave patterns and guess what we got a hit!
The closest match with a score of 89% was the song sung by Whales, and not just any old song this was the song that was recorded on to a gold disc and placed on the space probe Voyager.
Do you think it’s possible that someone has decoded that disc and the strange sounds we are hearing around the world, and in particular in the northern hemisphere is a response to that recording.
Here is my link.
http://www.movieviral.com/2012/01/27/strange-noises-heard-around-the-world-could-have-scientific-explanation/ Has CTV news clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf4e-AxJ7nM MANITOBA
There’s videos with the same noise going back to at least March 2011 and people have claimed to have hear them for much later like one man from 2009.
I’m not afraid and don’t actually calim to know what they are but I do think it’s something.
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Edmonton.
I’m having a very difficult time comprehending how you would defend the people who put up hoaxes that scared MILLIONS of people (prompting further hoaxes and fear) over the actions of a student who proved a very useful point, whether you liked her method or not.
We can all be fooled. We should take that warning with some humility.
The thoughtless, irresponsible ones are those that made the original videos and go about fear mongering that some epic catastrophe is about to befall us. They have actually done some damage to society.
Defend them? Huh. She was part of the problem. I said I can forgive the Conklin person because that’s where it started and they probably had no idea it would go viral. People that did it after rode the wave of fear. Perhaps I just wanted to blame her because she had the nerve to admit it.
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James Firman – Fascinating Theory! Keep working on it, drink more coffee, lol.
Will do!
My reply: The Deliberate Skeptical Hoax http://doubtfulnews.com/2012/01/the-deliberate-skeptical-hoax/
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