So according to the blog entry below, Sony Pictures has created an amusing viral web site that promotes the idea that the world is GOING TO END in 2012.
Complete with fake scientists, a fake lottery people can enter to be among the few survivors, et cetera.
What a bunch of wankers. This kind of shite is passed on enough by the true believers, who at least have the excuse of being deluded themselves. Major marketing departments joining the fun to help create “buzz” for a movie? Assholes.
Do you work for Sony Pictures?
Yes, I realize that flaming someone for putting up a site creates further “buzz”. Ooh, ooh, I’ve fallen into their trap! I’m a tool of the system! Woe is me.
Oh, come on. If mainstream science had really accepted the idea that the world would end in 2012, anyone who thought they’d hear about it first on a website they’ve never visited deserves… whatever is going to happen to them.
And just what is going to happen, eh? Think somebody is going to start hoarding canned tuna?
Because deliberately increasing the world’s level of ignorance is bad. And obviously people will be fooled, and some of them will just have a moment’s panic before they figure out they’d been fooled, and others of them will have to be talked down by one of their net-savvy, straght dope- or snopes-reading younger relatives, and so on.
The people who fall for this are the same people who won’t buy gas at a Chevron on Thursday (to show the oil companies they mean business, of course), or believe in the Lotus Boob, or get surprised when they order a product for an informercial and it’s useless.
This “hoax” isn’t going to increase the world’s level of ignorance. It’s just going to exploit it.
For the record, the link in the OP hosed my system.
Eh, it’s Sony. They probably needed a hobby to pass the time between distributing rootkits and sacrificing small children to the Elder Gods.
Sony Pictures owns Jeopardy! I hope they call me and **jayjay **before then.
Are you saying you DON’T worship at the Altar of the Lotus Boob?
-A True Believer
I get massively squicked out at the altar of the Lotus Boob.
I was about to jump in with something about how even stupid and ignorant people - *especially *stupid and ignorant people - should not be cynically and cruelly exploited to sell movie tickets, but I decided to actually look at the site first.
The first “news” story is about White House Chief of Staff Carl Annheuser and President Helmsley Wilson - fat, white President Helmsley Wilson. The home page has a “copyright Sony Pictures” notice on it and rather prominent links to a conventional promo site for the movie and another for the novel on which it was based.
This seems much less likely a deliberate deception than many other viral marketing sites I’ve seen. The fact that some people do seem to take it seriously is not evidence of wrongdoing on Sony’s part. Experience on this very board has taught me that now matter how obvious you think a joke is, *someone *will take it seriously.
I watched *Armeggedon *on a movie channel last night. Imagine how pissed off I was when I found out that I’d been duped and there really *wasn’t *a giant asteroid about to blow up the planet. Who the fuck do these people think they are? Fucking fear-mongerers.
Really? Every time I see it, I get pissed off that Bruce Willis wasn’t left on the asteroid.
I don’t think that’s entirely true. I have seen some jokes made here that were very obviously joking in nature, and I saw no evidence whatsoever that anyone really believed that there was a grasshopper named Steve (for instance). Please try to think more carefully before you post in the future.
Pssst. He was left on the asteroid…
I don’t think you’re a stick-up-your-ass killjoy; I think you just wanted to do a pitting and, in your excitement to post, came up with this ill-conceived claptrap which ended up being quite lame.
Better luck next time!
No. Harry Stamper was. Bruce Willis went on to make Breakfast of Champions and Disney’s The Kid.
I heard on the radio that the Martians are attacking!! :eek:
Never trust anything from Sony. This company Pirates the LAME mp3 encoder, while hypocritically campaigning against piracy, and uses the stolen (they consider it theft so by their words they stole) property on cds with rootkits on them.
Would you steal a LAME CD from the store? Sony would. Sony= mass piracy
cite:
http://www.the-interweb.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/52-Is-Sony-in-violation-of-the-LGPL-Part-II.html
Then the the stupid CEO, leading his band of morons too incompetent to get a job at a better company that doesn’t engage in mass piracy announces “nothing good has came from the internet”.
Apparently he feels the LAME encoder is good, making him extra stupid, or he didn’t get it from the internet. He must have hired actual burglars to break into the house of LAME devs and copy the encoder off their computers in person. Making him extra criminal.
Either way the only thing worse then the Sony CEO are the morons who believe OP’s link. Fortunately there is very few. Unfortunetly the OP is prolly giving them viral marketing exposure of some kind.