videohoax abuse on the net
Video uploaded on October 3rd 2007.
I’ve just watched this vid and it made me to write this post. At first I thought that it is a real calling for help but after few seconds I realised that it is just a hoax. FBI Missing Person List
Now I know it is a ARG.
Let’s play along…
that is the original comment :
On June 27th, my fiancée HOPE WILCOTT was abducted. This is an attempt to find her. I’ve reached out to various sites and groups to help spread the word. Special thanks to Stage6 for their support.
this screencapture was posted on official blog by earthian
Maybe the squiggles aren’t actually any kind of symbolic glyph or abstract graphical representation. Maybe they are trying to indicate something that is going on in the image. I got the idea when I noticed the large loop squiggle seems to like up with Connie’s face.
Here’s an enhanced capture of them two of them apparently eating cheerios together. Connie has some beverage in a mug with a flower with five petals on the side. In the background over Connie’s head is a frame picture, but I can’t really make it out.
And here’s the sequence of frames with the squiggles. One thing that struck me is that the vertical loop seems to outline the side of her face, while the horizontal mark is basically aligned with her nose in each frame. The doodles overlap just whatever in the background, but scrupulously avoid overlapping her face. U might just be that they show up better against the dark background, but I’m not prepared to rule anything out at this point.
These ones are cropped and numbered, but otherwise untouched.
There is a audio file as well.
Have YOU dugg anything else? Leave a comment, please
October 4, 2007 at 8:45 pm
I personally think that the video has been made just to promote the director. but it doesn’t work out as inteligent people would ignore it.
October 4, 2007 at 11:59 pm
IT IS REAL!!! http://youtube.com/hopemissing
October 6, 2007 at 9:53 am
Its not real its meant to be a “GAME” but it is the worse thing on the internet so far (well apart from kiddie porn but only just!) It should be banned right away from all sites and the people that made this pile of excrement should be put up against a wall and shot!
When there are things in the world were real people are being kidnapped then something like this is just sick!
October 6, 2007 at 10:45 am
this is really a game. ARG – Alternate reality game
October 6, 2007 at 7:41 pm
cool concept for an ARG. followed this over from stage6 ajvn have u heard the newest audio file on the blog. can’t make it out played it a bunch of times…
October 6, 2007 at 7:42 pm
here you go, some nice info for everyone:
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:h7pFzrlgU7MJ:htmob.com/gameplay.pdf+hopeismissing&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=uk
October 6, 2007 at 8:01 pm
It’s a promotion for a film. Lot’s of film are doing this.
What’s weird is the reaction on Stage6 – everyone there fell for it and then got really upset and freaked out. I think that stage6 gets a lot of older people.
Sanity is from Stage6 – he’s posted like 1000 times saying he wants to rape the actress and kill the director. Maybe he’s with the ARG, but I think that he’s just a nut who’s gotten wrapped up in the story.
October 6, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Well that just goes to show how much notice you actually take of what is writen in front of you sharkskank, I have never said those discusting things you say i have, ive only commented on the video 3 times and non of them said anything that you mentioned.
I just dont aggree with the way this “game” has been sent out into the net, there are some people out there that thought this was for real and not a fake (myself not being one of them you can tell its not real by the bad acting) With the way the world is today, with real people going missing and their family and friends needing peoples help to find them, do we really need something like this to have to make everyone think twice the next time someone really needs help to find a loved one?!?
October 6, 2007 at 10:14 pm
the audio is under words of support – hopeismissing.blogspot.com
October 7, 2007 at 12:49 am
Sanity your posts on Stage6 read exactly like those of 6 or 7 other posters, like ’sharkskull’ – all using the same phrases and making the same complaints, trying to get this video banned, over and over again. All of these members are like 10 minutes old – you can see this in their profile. If that’s really not you, then I’m sorry – but someone who writes a lot like you has been flooding the forum there with posts.
Look – I can appreciate that people don’t like being hoaxed and think that its promotion on Stage6 is innappropriate. But the video itself doesn’t attempt to convince anyone that this is really a missing person case. It plays out like a low budget TV show. The video doesn’t even make sense if you assume that it’s about a real missing person. That’s why everyone’s saying that they could tell within 10 seconds.
Have you considered that the filmmaker isn’t actually trying to hoax anyone, they’re just trying to present a realistic looking story? It doesn’t work as a hoax.
So if you want to complain that STage6 should acknowledge that this is a story up front, that’s fine. But claiming that the story should be banned because people will confuse it for a real case is silly.
October 7, 2007 at 1:16 am
greg
just had a listen but it doesn’t make any sense to me. what is she trying to say?
October 7, 2007 at 3:57 am
working on trying to clean it up. i know some others are as well. once i have it i’ll let you know.
October 7, 2007 at 8:17 am
sharkskank I except your apology
October 7, 2007 at 4:13 pm
GREG
can u please send me the audio file
October 7, 2007 at 11:31 pm
u know what, I’ll be straight out, I fell for it bad, I even emailed the guy trying to give my thoughts on how her captor may be using the watergate informants name because that was his idea of the kind of person she as a journalist would love to meet.
DAMN i’m stoned…. well, laugh it out, but I did fall for it bad man..
October 8, 2007 at 2:35 am
That wikipedia article is wrong. “ARGs” do not use the real world as a platform, they use the internet. Just thought I would clear that one up for everyone.
October 9, 2007 at 2:50 am
that’s the weirdest game I’ve ever hear. I wish that some guys will find out who the director is, and will kidnap his daughter and will send him few deepthroath real movies.
October 9, 2007 at 1:18 pm
what shocking, front page news!!!…
this “Help Us Find Hope” crap, might be free speech… but it isn’t art… and it’s in bad taste, to boot… but my neck of the Internet might have higher community standards than others…
“bad acting” as a sign that “hopeismissing” isn’t real???…
reality is chock full of “no talents/no gifts” on public view in every day life… HUFH/HiM smacked of un-reality, to me, because everything else about it (aside from the so-called “acting”) was too slick to be true… too much like a “public access channel” cableTV wannabee that couldn’t be bothered with the “public access channel” cableTV paperwork for getting on-air…
wikipedia “wrong”???…
information anarchy >< peer-reviewed facts/”truth”…
…
the problem here is people who look to the Internet for “truth”… as if *bona-fide* research begins and ends with a google search…
as if youtube and stage6 and any other “alternative,” Internet media outlet isn’t just as corporatist, beneath the bits-on-the-wire, as classically monopoly-owned “traditional” media…
…
what bothers me more is the crappy code that DivX continues to spew, in “upgrade” after upgrade of their alledegly “core-competence” player… DivX/Stage6 still can’t even seem to figure out how to code to more elegantly co-exist with Aero Glass on Vista, without stone-knives-and-bear-skin resets of the desktop… (NOTE to DivX — Get With It…)
what bothers me even more, is that when i go to Stage6 for “entertainment,” this low-talent/few skillzs “ARG”/hoax takes up so much space on the front page, without providing for direct ANONYMOUS comment, in exchange for imposing such gratuituous bad taste on one and all…
…
when I play `net vids on any `puter that matters to me, I do my level best to suppress embedded scripting and other garbage from auto-executing on me, from beneath the sheepskin of “entertainment”…
you can’t view Stage6 spew, in DivX, without also granting script execute permissions on the DivX “webplayer” ActiveX control…
if I can’t count on Stage6 for any measure of GoodTaste, why should I count on Stage6 for any measure of GoodHousekeeping, with regard to scripts embedded in their video streams???…
there is an embedded URL redirect at 00:38 of 02:48 of Episode One of HUFH/HiM… the redirect changes with every replay…
why would I want to go to any of those other places (other vids, for now), just because I granted permission to play one vid (Episode One)???…
that’s what bothers me most…
October 10, 2007 at 2:20 am
This is a link to download the audio file. Its from the page source of the hoe is missing blog. Its a 17 sec clip.
http://vm.privatephone.com/cgi-bin/voicemail.cgi?command=get_voicemail&id=F5A648B783F224D4EEA83F09CD2AF75E4B37013A54757A7EE5E1871284366305EB8DA9D014F804EC81ED58B0970E8E5BF789DD964D9E2BAD1B1F417FB63DA8A254A2262373210BF8A2E93A029CE81E65B7336C5455A726DA32FDA06C36F2272A&file=temp.wav