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Jordanian Mayor Angry Over "Alien Invasion" Prank
krou writes "Jordanian mayor Mohammed Mleihan has taken a dim view of local newspaper Al-Ghad's April Fools prank, which saw a front page story claiming that 'flying saucers flown by 3m (10ft) creatures had landed in the desert town of Jafr.' The paper claimed that communication networks had gone down, and people were fleeing the area. The mayor called the local security authorities, who combed the area, but they were unable to find any evidence of the aliens. Mr Mleihan is now considering suing because of the distress it caused to residents: 'Students didn't go to school, their parents were frightened and I almost evacuated the town's 13,000 residents. People were scared that aliens would attack them.'" I guess they've never heard of Orson Welles in Jordan.
The mayor is a retard!
Doctors do Massage in Longview WA now, who knew?
1. Jordanians (and possibly, by extension, all Arabs) have a hilarious sense of humor.
2. Politicians EVERYWHERE are absolute morons
they'd never try this in Saudi Arabia. They'd end up executed for sorcery.
Since it was a UFO prank, wouldn't the charge be saucery?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
When some radio station you normally trust starts reporting a hoax it takes a while to figure out it's a hoax. It's happened several times.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2005/06/29
The urban legend that sprang up, about ignorant people believing that the radio broadcast of War of the worlds was real, is one of the most pervasive and believed myths in modern times.
It was fuelled by the newspapers and magazines of the era, who didn't like radio much and were keen to portray it in a bad light.
As anyone who has heard the broadcast knows, the show was frequently interrupted by voice overs telling you that you were listening to a dramatisation.
No doubt though, there will be those on slashdot who will also continue to perpetuate this legend as historical fact.
Sure...
"Later studies suggested this panic was less widespread than newspapers suggested. During this period, many newspapers were concerned that radio, a new medium, would render the press obsolete. In addition, this was a time of yellow journalism, and as a result, journalists took this opportunity to demonstrate the dangers of broadcast by embellishing the story, and the panic that ensued, greatly." see Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future By Stanley J. Baran, Dennis K. Davis
Robert E. Bartholomew suggests that hundreds of thousands were frightened in some way, but notes that evidence of people taking action based on this fear is "scant" and "anecdotal".
See - Bartholomew, Robert E. (2001). Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness and Social Delusion. Jefferson, North Carolina: Macfarland & Company. pp. 217ff.. ISBN 0-7864-0997-5.
And for a slightly more amusing take on the myth :
http://www.cracked.com/article_18487_6-ridiculous-history-myths-you-probably-think-are-true_p2.html
That enough citations for you?
As anyone who has heard the broadcast knows, the show was frequently interrupted by voice overs telling you that you were listening to a dramatisation.
Not quite. Up until last year, my parents had a record (33) of the entire broadcast. There were only three times the announcement was made that this was a dramatisation(sic) and not real. Had someone come in at any other time, they would not have known it wasn't real.
I should have saved the record from the yard sale, but I debated what I would do with it in the ensuing decades other than holding on to it as a curious memento of the broadcast.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Well, if the US ever finds a reason to go to war with Jordan, all they need to do is to carpet bomb the place with old copies of "The Weekly World News http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekly_World_News ."
The Jordanians will be to dazed to put up a fight.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
It also ran without any commercial breaks which also made it seem more genuine to the people who tuned in late. The exaggerated level of panic is the only thing that was an urban legend.
See - Bartholomew, Robert E. (2001). Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns and Head-Hunting Panics: A Study of Mass Psychogenic Illness and Social Delusion. Jefferson, North Carolina: Macfarland & Company. pp. 217ff.. ISBN 0-7864-0997-5.
Please post more citations on Meowing Nuns. I, like, need them for a research project or something . . .
. . . or is this just Hentai stuff, and not real nuns?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
When you are in a region close to warring countries, how are you expected to react when an unidentified force lands and disembark ? The mayor reaction was quite sane : aerial unidentified vehicles, possibly military, were signaled to have landed by what was supposed to be a trusted channel. Doing this kind of prank in an unstable region is like shouting "fire !" with no specific reason in the middle of a crowd. It creates apparently stupid reactions but that are perfectly logical in the context of the decision maker.
Imagine a prank in the 1960 that would say that strange cigar shaped rockets were coming toward the USA. Would you blame all the sheeplish people who would rush for the shelters ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
You might want to stay off the Internet every April 1. It can be a little confusing (and annoying).
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
1938 was before WWII, before the cold war, and before the nuclear fear.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
This is correct, except it's spelled "Welles."
There are also a number of very good reason why people thought the radio episode was actual news reporting, outlined in this Radiolab episode.
There was a disclaimer at the beginning of the broadcast, which most people missed. There was a (fictitious) musical act "scheduled" for the show. The music was first interrupted to bring "breaking news" of "explosions seen on Mars." The next interruption reported that the explosions were rockets leaving the surface of mars, and a third said they were heading towards earth. Every time a report was finished, the music returned, leaving people to wonder. Every time there was another interruption, the whole thing gained more credibility.
Then they brought in actors portraying astronomers, government officials, and others, all of this offered up with the seriousness of the Hindenburg coverage--which Welles listed as one of his inspirations. One of the freakier parts that gave me chills even knowing it was fake is an on-scene reporter at the landing site. He sees something come out of the spacecraft, and it attacks the soldiers in front of him (with requisite gunfire and other sound effects). The reporter is emotionally distraught but still trying to report when suddenly---silence, he is cut off in mid-sentence. There's a good five or ten seconds of silence, which is almost unheard of on radio even today.
Welles knew what he was doing. He knew that War of the Worlds presented as originally told would be stale and get no listeners. He wanted to trick people, though he originally denied it, in order to teach them not to believe everything they see or hear from mass media. The lesson has obviously not been learned--people have pulled the same stunt successfully at least 3 times, discussed on Radiolab along with the occasionally disastrous results, and this makes a fourth.
Your brain is not a computer.