Patterico's Pontifications

10/28/2007

More on the CNN-MEChA Spoof Webpage

Filed under: General — DRJ @ 7:01 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Earlier today, Patterico noted the CNN spoof webpage that reported MEChA had claimed responsibility for setting the California fires. It looks like the responsible party might have been a new poster at ALI-PAC who also posted the spoof there. If so, it was subsequently removed by ALI-PAC and the user banned:

“Yeah, let me recap so we can put this one totally behind us (hopefully, people won’t continue to post about it). Basically, a relatively new poster, posted an article which *appeared* to be a CNN story about the cause of fires in SoCal, but was a well crafted lookalike. We have since removed the posts, banned the offending user and…hopefully, everyone can proceed as normal.”

Looks like ALI-PAC got burned as much as CNN and MEChA.

— DRJ

5 Responses to “More on the CNN-MEChA Spoof Webpage”

  1. Ahem–given the context, are you sure you don’t want to edit that last sentence a bit.

    kishnevi (201054) — 10/28/2007 @ 8:12 pm

  2. Having read the offending page (and I can see how it could fool people), I’m wondering if the name of the Orange County fire chief is accurately given, or if they gave him a made up name to make a subtle point
    (“Kris Concepcion”)

    kishnevi (201054) — 10/28/2007 @ 8:19 pm

  3. Dang. Wish I would have thought of doing that! Of course it’s wrong and probably actionable, but haha! That is the most believable bogus site I’ve ever seen.

    Would have been funnier if they blamed Tibetan monks or something though. Or Canadians!

    Kevin (4890ef) — 10/28/2007 @ 8:36 pm

  4. Ahem–given the context, are you sure you don’t want to edit that last sentence a bit.

    I thought that was part of the charm.

    fishbane (1f2790) — 10/29/2007 @ 7:33 am

  5. Once I made a critical comment about MEChA chapters at two California universities and shortly got a message from the system administrator at UCLA that someone on their system had attempted to send a computer virus to me. We have local experience with some politically vicious MEChA graduates (some chapters are apparently more militant than others). But setting wildfires doesn’t seem to me to be the style of even the most extreme MEChA adherents. “Spoof” pages this realistic are extremely damaging in ways which might not be apparent to the creators at first.

    Rachel (6e6045) — 10/30/2007 @ 2:21 am


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