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Incredible
but True amateurs fool the TV!
OR
How the Crobard hoaxed a real TV journalist crew!
"When
one works in TV, one has to be careful about what one says..."
Denise Fabre
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Notes
from the translator :
TF1 is the number one TV channel in France, with national coverage.
Denise Fabre has been a TV host for something like thirty years and
is extremely well known. She specializes in TV games and similarly brain
damaged shows.
Sophie Favier is your stereotypical young blond tart turned TV host.
Denis Vincenti is one of the journalists behind the "Incredible but
True" show. He used to be a well respected journalist for a well respected
investigative TV program, until it was found he had used actors to create
one of his TV reports out of thin air.
The Crobard is a humoristic web site (click around here, and you'll
see) that's been around since 1999 and pokes fun at goths, punks, and
other alternative groups. It's the brain child of Fab and Sand, who
are themselves punks. They are the "we" on this web site.
The horrid English is all my fault ( me the anonymous translator ).
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Background
:
The
Crobard webzine
: humoristic web site that's been on the web since the dawn of the internet
in France, hereby declared innocent.
Note to the newbies: Internet is a universe the first
rule of which is exponential: the "older" a site is, the more unavoidable
it is.
The journalist team
: made up of well known TV personalities and other people with strong
links with the world of TV, hereby declared guilty by negligence.
The
hoax : put
together through a synergy of goodwill, people united under the banner
of a good joke, they have extenuating circumstances (they were provoked
into doing it), and their case could easily be dismissed.
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"The
TV show Incredible but True won't just be a succession of amusing images.
Some images, at times serious but always incredible ones, will lead
us to think about society in our days." Jean-Pascal
Lacoste, StarAc 1
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Context
:
A
bunch of web pages that are a spoof of an online service that proposes
products that are so surreal that it seems impossible to believe
it, impossible but not incredible...
The original pages, only slightly modified since
their creation, are here (in French,
just click around). |
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Worded
like an incitement to commit the crime, this email left us speechless
for hours. We even went back to read our web pages to make sure
they weren't as ambiguous as that email seemed to indicate. Overcoming
our surprise, our brains started running at high speed. We don't
know anything about the show ( it' only broadcasted during the summer
school vacations ) but the opportunity is too good to miss. We make
a few key emergency phone calls, to see how much collective energy
we can gather and spend on the idea. It's around 4pm on that same
Thursday January 8th when Fab calls the phone number indicated in
the email : " Fab Crobard from the Destroy-Escort
Company " and it's without doubt with that sentence
that everything really starts...
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Object
: -= Show TF1 * Important =-
Date sent : Thursday January 8th, 11:52:17am
Hello, my name is Xxxxxxx XXXXXXX, I'm a journalist for
the show "Incredible but True" on TF1 (with Sophie Favier among
others...) We are currently working on subjects for our forthcoming
broadcasts and I'd like to get in touch with your organization
"Destroy-Escort" to get information regarding this incredible
but true activity! It's a very serious proposal since we would
end up having a story about your services which seem to be highly
original. Hoping to receive an answer from you very soon, I thank
you in advance.
Artistically, Xxxxx -
= R&G Productions =-
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When
Fab hangs up we barely believe it, and this will be a recurring
theme in this story. I think that till the end we won't really believe
it. As I type these words this adventure still feels to me too surreal
to be true, but nevertheless...
Anyway, on Thursday January 8th, after 20 to 30 minutes on the phone,
the initiative is on our side. It's up to us to stage the
things that will get our journalists where we want them to be, by
inventing the story of a service that doesn't exist and
by making up out of thin air all the elements they need for
their report.
In short, we are now at the helm of what is commonly known as an
hoax. |
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The
journalists' excuses
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The
Crobard's advantages
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-
a poor knowledge of the internet (one only has
to click on a few links on the web page of our service to understand
that it's a joke)
- too much self-confidence (not a single time
will they even consider that we might just refuse to participate
to their show)
- a poor knowledge of the alternative world
- there really is in the USA a site that offers the services of
people with specials profiles |
- long time users of the internet and therefore a better knowledge
of the tool and its potential
- knowledge about the world of television and the ability to step
back with regard to it
- crazy looks that might lead one to think we actually are crazy
- a mischievous will to laugh about everything |
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