Why Exactly Do Hoaxers Hoax In The First Place?

[Guest DWA]

To me, it's not a problem that people do it. It's a problem that serious academics could think it's a serious issue in confirming sasquatch.

Anyone well acquainted with the evidence knows that debunked suit hoaxes are clearly different from what eyewitnesses are reporting. Debunked footprints are clearly different from the ones accepted by experts. And lies are just lies.

[Guest SoFla]

I look at Rick Dyer and immediately recognize a pathological liar. My brother, God rest his soul was a Vietnam veteran who had mental problems stemming from PTSD and the malaria he contracted over there and he was a pathological liar. So when I first saw Dyer videos I picked it off from jump. There is something wrong with that guy besides being the liar and all. he may be suffering from some type of post traumatic stress disorder from his job as a corrections officer-quite a depressing place to spend most of one's waking hours in a week. Also, don't discount drug addiction which a lot of people claim that THEY see from Dyer's videos-the scratching, nodding stuff screams opiate dependency. Also, Dyer loved to play it like a rapper on a video-showing all of the money he was making from those stupidass BF chumps. Then again when it comes down to hoaxers-they are mostly insecure individuals who don't think that anything that THEY can do by themselves is ever good enough so they have to pretend they are someone, or someTHING else.

The last part I got from my years as a performing musician down here in south Florida. I have met countless guys who have told me they were something and or someone else, I even jammed with a fake Jeff Beck

[Cotter]

^interesting take.

Question - did the fake Jeff Beck play air guitar? That should have been a dead giveaway!

:-)

Wholeheartedly agree tho, RD's got issues. Above and beyond the 'regular' hoaxer".

[Guest SoFla]

^interesting take.

Question - did the fake Jeff Beck play air guitar? That should have been a dead giveaway!

:-)

Wholeheartedly agree tho, RD's got issues. Above and beyond the 'regular' hoaxer".

That the whole thing that I never did understand about that guy Cotter-he was actually a pretty **** good guitar player on that Strat-he didn't NEED to pretend that he was someone else. There was also a fake Rod Stewart running around down here and I have met guys who told me " I wrote this song or that one, and I bought a million dollar house with that money". It started happening so much that I started doing some investigating before I'd believe these guys. Then I met the guy who wrote Denise (oh Denise ooh bee ooh I'm in love with you Denise ooh bee ooh) and he turned out to BE the right guy Neil something or other. He was staying at The Breakers in Palm Beach when I was playing poolside there with his like 100 year old mom...nice cat.

[Guest]

In my personal opinion....the main two reasons someone would hoax would be for attention or money.

[Guest]

1. They find it funny.

2. They need attention.

3. They are trying to expose self-proclaimed BF experts (hello FB/FB)

4. They incorrectly think there is money to be had

5. They have a mental illness

[Djj]

Revenge

[dopelyrics]

It's a great question, and many of the answers above are spot on.

I think they do it because they can't believe something like Sasquatch exists, and they think believers are stupid. And they want to prove that believers are stupid, so they hoax to say "I told you so!".

BobbyO absolutely nailed it when he said it was about the Ego. For me, it all comes back to Ego.

Best regards.

Lee

[dopelyrics]

To be clear, I don't think hoaxers think believers are "stupid" generally, but relating to Bigfoot. Hope that makes sense.

[Guest Steve Byrne]

I just watched Tony Robbins on TedTalks... Applying his basics to this question of hoaxer motivations might be enlightening. The six basic motivations for people:

Certainty: Perhaps by doing a hoax, a person can be more certain that other events are also hoaxes and they were right to be skeptical. Making money is another form of certainty and security.

Uncertainty: The thrill of not knowing if it will be accepted, or if they will get caught. (too much certainty is boring)

Significance: The feeling of having influence over other people and swaying their beliefs may make a person feel more relevant. Also a need for attention.

Connection and Love: I guess this would be attention from supporters. At the price of disdain from strangers, the support of a handful of people can be profoundly valuable. Ivan Marx might fall onto this one or significance.

Growth: I don't see it for hoaxing, but if approached as an art or craft with social implications, a person may feel they are growing and learning.

Contribution to others: Helping others see the folly of believing (assuming convinced skeptics here). In my case I might try replicating a hoax to see how hard or easy it would be, but I would be transparent about it... so that we could all be aware of what we might screen out as strong evidence. I don't call it hoaxing... More like Bobo doing a recreation. Trying to help.

We can apply these basics to just about everything we do. The questions: Why am I doing this? Why are they doing that? don't get asked openly enough. We jump up to certainty and grab the answer that makes us feel best about ourselves.

Posting on a forum, I ask myself this all the time, and the reasons jump around. Growth and understanding are the big ones for me, and also trying to contribute, if I think a point or viewpoint is missing from the record. When I feel myself drifting into attention seeking, I try to delete those. I catch myself sometimes. Sometimes too late and I feel embarassed.

I think the jokers are going for a contribution. Humor is a contribution and attention grab at the same time, combined with the suspense of not knowing if people will laugh and then being loved for the joke and bringing smiles.

I highly recommend the "Head Games" segment of TedTalks... I'm half way through and finding it profoundly enlightening.

Now, please satisfy my needs for attention by not ignoring me and love by saying nice things and giving me plusses, the suspense is tremendous and I want to know I'm right. It will help me grow and validate my contribution!

LOL!

[Guest]

I think a lot of it stems from an inferiority complex, and has sociopathic undertones. It's kind of like that genius that serial killers assign themselves. People who don't get recognized for being smart, and want to outfox people to prove how smart they are, at the expense of others. I don't think money is really a factor, considering there is no money in hoaxing, unless you start your own scientific journal, or something.....

[Cotter]

Steve, you are the smartest person on this board!

Plus!

:-)

LOL

[Guest]

Certainty: Perhaps by doing a hoax, a person can be more certain that other events are also hoaxes and they were right to be skeptical.

Maybe, but you don't need a hoax to be 'right to be skeptical', I think skeptism about the extraordinary is certainly healthy and normal.

Let's say, for example, a man claimed they saw a Bigfoot in the middle of Time Square in broad daylight. He's a sincere sounding enough witness in that he seems to genuinely believe that he saw it there and "I'm telling you, it wasn't a bear and it wasn't a man in a suit", but there are no other witnesses and no evidence that there was a Bigfoot there and plenty that there wasn't.

Would you still believe him or be at least a little skeptical about his claim?

[Guest DWA]

One can never do anything based on one report. I'd simply explain to the guy that he may indeed have seen this; we just don't have much to go on in terms of followup.

It is when thousands of sober individuals - just the kinds of people one would think would see one - see them,and describe them consistently, including elements of primate behavior and anatomy generally known only to specialists in the field, in places that are in or that adjoin large tracts of what appear to be excellent habitat, and many of these are multiple-witness encounters,...weeellll, I could go on and on, but treating these and Times Square Suit's accounts exactly the same is taking empiricism beyond common sense.

As a pretty smart guy says elsewhere here:

"It is high time that some should realize that something that has been encountered thousands of times no longer can be viewed as extraordinary."

[Guest]

The claims of encounters isn't what I find extraoridnary, it is Bigfoot. They really are interesting and extraordinary, whouldn't you agree?

But okay, let's view a different extraordinary claim: Man claims he was abducted by little green men from Alpha Centuri.

Here is an example that counters you quite handily. Thousands of people claim to have been abducted by aliens all around the world and their stories bare remarkable similarities to each other, however it's safe to conclude that they weren't abducted by aliens because of the practical aspects of space travel and the complete lack of reliable evidence of alien visitation at all, despite what Ancient Aliens would have us believe.

Edited March 29, 2013 by Leftfoot