these were the scumbags behind the emma watson threats, by the way. this is a look into what they do, and it is a very specific type of crazy that i have to admit im completely fascinated by. --- In late September, more than 800,000 federal employees were temporarily out of work in a partisan dispute over the Affordable Care Act. The furloughed employees included 17,400 NASA staffers, leaving just a skeleton crew to monitor crucial operations like the International Space Station. It was the first shutdown of the American government since 1995. At 4:16pm on Oct. 1, rememberthe13th was registered on Namecheap. This was just a few hours after NASA had announced that, due to the government shutdown, all public activities and events were cancelled. That evening, Remember the 13th was fully operational. The site featured a rocketship, a flurry of social media buttons, and a countdown to Nov. 13, when it promised to reveal “the biggest discovery that will shake the Earth.” In the top left hand side of the page was the official NASA logo. “The website is currently being tweeted 100 times per minute and has over 50k facebook shares,” read a message I received Oct. 5 from SocialVEVO. “It has took over worldwide forums and social media. Worldwide news media reports the announcement could be alien life.” But the site got the Internet wondering: If NASA was shut down, how could it put together such a groundbreaking scientific revelation? It couldnt, of course. Reddit’s r/conspiracy forum and 4chan’s paranormal imageboard, /x/, were the first to raise the alarm about SocialVEVO’s hoax. “Can I just say how devious it is of them to pretend to be NASA right about now?” redditor adrianbrony commented. “[T]hat means that the ACTUAL NASA wont be able to step in and debunk this because they are currently defunded until the shutdown ends. So they have to just sit there while this idiot makes a liar and a fool out of them in the public eye and theres nothing they can do about it.” By Oct. 4, media organizations had gotten wise, too. “Clearly, this is really just some sort of viral marketing attempt (which, just as clearly, is working well),” reported Phil “Bad Astronomer” Plait at Slate. With no other webs left to spin, SocialVEVO made its grand reveal. It was a YouTube video for “Purple Ninja, “ by an unknown singer named Beeki Vendi. The man in the video was Povolotski, easily recognizable from “Pickles.”
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 05:07:37 +0000
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