What other hoaxes have been big??

The accidental tourist -- this was a deliberate hoax of a photograph of a fellow standing atop the World Trade Center tower just a fraction of a second before the plane hit the tower. This had a huge impact, [even though] it was a hoax and it was a recognizable hoax -- you didn't have to know anything about PhotoShop to know better. All you had to do is look at it and see the guy is wearing a winter coat and a wool cap.

That's the kind of hoax that most people should have got right away, but they didn't because they were blinded by something else -- the horror of it all. They were looking at this last half-second of this unsuspecting man's life, and the last half-second of normalcy for any of us. This was the moment -- the exact instant that it stopped being a beautiful September morning and it became what it is now.

This thing showed up on the Internet about two and a half weeks after Sept. 11. At that time, people had begun to gain a small amount of distance from the horror of Sept. 11. That doesn't mean we'd come to terms with it. But there was some sort of coexistence starting to happen. It was no longer as raw or as ripe as it has been. This photograph ripped that apart. It took people straight back to Sept. 11, to the feelings of that day. It was forwarded all over the place.

We still don't know who the fellow was, either the fellow in the photograph or who actually put this thing together. I doubt we ever will. This fellow has a good reason to hide right now, because a lot of people are very angry about this.

Is that a common thing with other hoaxes, people being upset about being duped? Feeling like they got caught?

Honestly, you'd think it would happen more than it does, but it doesn't. For the most part, people will generally become more angry about the substance of the story as opposed to the fact that it was a hoax and that they have been had. Look at the uproar over Bonsai Kitten.

This is a complete hoax. No cats were harmed in any way shape or form. No cats are being put in glass jars. There are no crazy Japanese out there making Bonsai pets. It doesn't matter. People are still completely up in arms about animal abuse. You tell them that there are no animals being abused, no one has plans to, no one has done this. They're still very angry.

We get a lot of angry e-mails about that one, because people cannot let go of the idea that this is a hoax. The feelings that it stirred up in them are just not going to be put to rest that easily.

Has it been the same way for the accidental tourist?

It certainly feels like that at this point. It's starting to quiet down, and one of the things that helps a great deal is the number of parody sites that came up immediately afterwards where we had the accidental tourist everywhere. You now have pictures of him at the Hindenberg and the explosion of the Challenger, in the car with the Kennedys. The idea now is if you ever find yourself standing next to this fellow, run. Run fast.

What Sept. 11 urban legends are you still receiving a lot of?

Mall-o-ween. According to this very widely circulated e-mail and now a widespread rumor, a gal who had been dating a man from Afghanistan received a letter just shortly before Sept 11. In the meantime, the boyfriend had disappeared and was never seen again.

The letter she received told her not to take any airplane flights on the 11th, and not to be in any shopping malls on Oct. 31. The e-mail writer was a real person. She admitted writing the e-mail and she wrote it because this was a story her friend told her and this was supposedly what had befallen a friend of a friend.

She didn't know the girl who had supposedly received the letter, and of course she didn't know the boyfriend either. But she did believe the story that her friend told her, at least she did at that time. The FBI had investigated it. A key part of the story was that supposedly the letter had been turned over to the FBI, and this was added credibility. We contacted the FBI, and they said there's no such letter.

Meanwhile the story is now being reflected back to us from Singapore and from Japan. I've picked up two versions where it is being told in Canada, where it's being told as a specific warning in Canada -- as in, Ontario provincial police are looking into it, and the girl lives locally.

We're getting numerous e-mails from all over the place where people swear it is true. "My mother works with the girl's mother, the girl who got the letter," and this is happening in every place across the U.S. If we were to believe all the e-mails that we have received, we would have to believe that there was a woman in every city in the U.S. dating an Afghan man who disappeared, sent the same letter. It's just amazing.

What makes that one so compelling?

First it has to do with something that is yet to take place. There is a sense of anxiety afoot here. People will not fully make up their minds about it until the 31st has come and gone and nothing has happened. Until then, they're waiting and seeing and they're spreading the rumor, just in case.

Second, there's a strong component here of getting to be the bell ringer. People who forward this story on to others or who tell other people about it gain a sense of satisfaction from having done their bit to fight terrorism.

It's empowering and it's also a way to sort of grab the spotlight. As cold as that sounds, there is often a component of that in warnings. People circulate these ones willy-nilly partly because they want to protect those they care about, but also because it's their way of feeling important. It's funny because they never see how this just contributes to a growing environment of fear.

There is a third reason why it is very popular and that has to do with trying to take back a sense of control that we lost in the wake of the attacks. Terrorism can strike anywhere at any time. There are no warnings.

This attempts to take something that is completely inexplicable, that can't be planned for, and to reduce it to a problem of if you knew the exact when and where you wouldn't be there that day.

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