High-Concept Hoaxing & Hi-8 Bricks
Episode 08:28:2023 - Prompt: Hoax
Where Hoax took me…
It’s easier to fixate on elaborate, high-concept hoaxes that depend on layers of perpetrators & believers than on a particular hoax that involves me.
How can I write about this theme & make it personal?
I thought about the first significant realization I had of being deceived by a widely approved narrative, one that I learned in school.
A hoax relies on inspired storytelling & hope.
As a child growing up in the ‘70s, we were taught that the colonists settled America under the directive of the Manifest Destiny. The narrative, as taught in the public school system of the District of Columbia, was presented as fact.
There was no examination of what it meant to millions of native communities & lives. Only that “we” Americans were driven by “our” God to expand West no matter what.
A decade later, I learned about Planned Obsolescence and started to analyze approved narratives. I quickly felt deceived by my own country’s origin story.
I’d like to think my healthy skepticism, along with years of working in advertising, has saved me from falling prey to the many hoaxes out there now.
It’s also hard to help someone who is in the midst of a hoax, as the entire premise is to take advantage of our secret desire to get rich quickly or feel better faster or get something for nothing.
Admission of compliance in a hoax is costly for the soul.
Which brings me to the one hoax I fell for…
It was the early 90’s in Baltimore.
I was a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art with a focus in photography when video as an art form was introduced into the program.
The department had a Video Toaster, a prosumer editing system with lots of fun graphics and TV quality production features.
We had been using NTSC tapes to record our work which involved carrying a S-VHS camcorder deck on one shoulder and a huge camera on the other.
There was nothing covert about it.
Sony had launched the Hi-8 video camera in 1989, and everything changed.
(Steven Soderbergh’s film, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, came out the same year.)
But these little cameras were expensive, and the school only had three with a long waitlist to check them out.
Oh, to have one of my own!
It was a lazy Sunday morning at the farmer’s market.
Baltimore’s farmer’s market is under the I-95 highway downtown. I think most people think of a city’s farmer’s market as gentrified (I do. NYC Union Square, Larchmont Village…)
The farmer’s market of the early ‘90’s was as gritty as the city itself.
Autumn & I were schlumping our way through stalls of fruits & veg when a young man approached us.
[The following dialogue is dramatized for effect.]
“Y’all look like artists,” he opened.
“Why, yes… how did you know?” I said.
“You just have that look about you. Like you observe things,” he said.
Oh the vanity! A stranger called us out as artists!
Knowing he had us, he told us his buddy drove a truck for Radio Shack or The Wiz and a palette of Sony Hi-8 video cameras had “fallen off the truck”.
This buddy needed to get rid of them fast.
“You want to buy one for $60? It would really help him out,” said our new friend.
Autumn & I had probably $30 between us. I, being the more skeptical one, asked for proof before we discussed going to an ATM machine for the rest.
The guy walked us behind a pillar where he uncovered a sealed box for a Sony Hi-8 camera.
He handed it to me. It had weight. I was in.
“I want one, too,” said Autumn.
The guy told us he’d take us to his buddy’s to get a second one, but he didn’t have a car.
Yes, we offered to drive him… I know, I know.
We climbed into my red Sentra and drove to a neighborhood off of Greenmount Avenue. We still hadn’t stopped at an ATM machine when the guy told us to pull over.
“I don’t want to roll up on my buddy in a strange car. He’s paranoid,” he said.
Suddenly, Autumn & I got wise.
We must have told him to bring the second camera before we got the rest of the money. He said he needed something to prove a sale, so we gave him the $30.
Then he took off running. Autumn shouted. I… threw a shoe!
We opened the Sony Hi-8 box in the back seat.
It was a brick.
$30 is not much to lose for such a valuable lesson.
If it’s too good to be true, it’s not true.
OR
Just because you want it to be true doesn’t make it so.
YOUR TURN: Hoax is complicated.
I have a few friends who have fallen victim to costly hoaxes in the past few years.
From losing an entire savings account to a crypto scam to having the bank blame the victim for being hacked.
In both cases, the victims felt ashamed, guilty, angry, and ostracized.
Even though I lost only $30, I felt embarrassed for my greed.
Where does HOAX take you? Have you inadvertently been part of a hoax?
Have you felt like you were hoaxed simply for believing in a sales pitch that didn’t pan out?
Share your story in 200 - 300 words (extra words this week).
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Happy writing!
The first time I was alone in my house in Spain, I locked myself out and my front door had to be cracked open. A few weeks ago, it wasn't me who was locked out, but my cell phone was locked. I entered the wrong PIN several times and needed the PUK to unlock it. I had no way to contact anyone. But I really needed to reach my partner. I had no choice but to go to my neighbors, an elderly couple who speak only the village dialect. I tried to explain my problem to the "vecina" in Spanish. She came back with a charger. After another attempt, she then handed me her cell phone. This proved to be difficult, however, because Mike kept pushing me away. He thought it was another scam call, as such as well as fake messages, hoaxes etc. had been accumulating for some time. I decided to do some "phone terror" and call him every 30 seconds, so that he would eventually become skeptical and see that it was a Spanish number. Then after a while he tried to reach me on my cell phone and realized that something was wrong. He was concerned, his first thought was that I had a car accident or something happened to me. The neighbor's phone rang 15 minutes later and it was Mike.
Whether the neighbor knew by now what my problem was, I don't know. Anyway, I sat with the neighbors until midnight and we talked about God and the world.
“May I help you?” The young hotel receptionist looked up as Keith and I stepped to the front desk. “Yes, we’re passing through and wondered if you have a room for the night,” I said. “We don’t have a reservation.” “There’re only a few rooms left,” she said. “How much for the least expensive?” She quoted a price. I turned to Keith. “Sounds OK,” he said, “we’ll take it.” I gave the receptionist my credit card, signed the agreement, initialed the section about a $500 fee for smoking in a non-smoking room, and picked up the passkeys. When we entered the room, Keith and I noted the faint smell of cigarette smoke. I wondered if this was a scam, a hoax, a fraud, swindle, or deception to get that five-hundred dollars out of us. We got ready for bed, tired after a long day of driving. Keith fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, but I took longer to settle. The air conditioner hummed, coughed, whoosh-whooshed and thump-thumped then hummed. OK, maybe I can fold that clatter into sleep. Several minutes passed. “Chirp!” I opened my eyes and saw the smoke alarm’s green light blink red. “You have GOT to be kidding,” I said, waking Keith. “Chirp!” I leaped up and turned on a light. Keith rolled out of bed wearing only his t-shirt. “Bring that chair over here next to the bar refrigerator. I’ll see if I can reach the reset button.” He stepped from chair to refrigerator while I looked up, admiring the view. “That might do it,” he said as he climbed down. We settled into bed again. “Chirp!” “I’ll go to the Front Desk,” Keith said. “No, I’ll do it; I signed the agreement.” I pulled on yoga pants, slipped on sandals, clasped a jacket over my Cats nightshirt, then grabbed one of the passkeys and headed to the Lobby. “May I help you?” “Yes. There seem to be problems with our room. It smells like cigarette smoke, the air conditioning whooshes and thumps intermittently and…” “Would you write down everything that’s wrong with your room? I’ll try to find you another.” The receptionist handed me a pad of paper and a pen. “The smoke alarm is chirping and keeping us awake. It probably needs a new battery.” “I’ll have it checked in the morning. There’s only the King Suite available. Here are the passkeys. I apologize for your inconvenience.” Keith and I gathered our stuff and moved to the new room. The King Suite’s door opened to a King-sized Jacuzzi. As we snuggled into bed yet again, I giggled. In my mind’s eye, I saw Keith standing in his t-shirt on the bar refrigerator next to King-sized Jacuzzi across the room. No hoax, only sweet dreams of that view.