The Story Behind MJ’s Hoax Video

German broadcaster RTL said the purpose of the experiment was to show how quickly misinformation and conspiracy theories are forwarded online.

“We wanted to show how easily users can be manipulated on the Internet with hoax videos,” spokesman Heike Schultz of Cologne-based RTL told The Associated Press. “Therefore, we created this video of Michael Jackson being alive, even though everybody knows by now that he is dead — and the response was breathtaking.”

RTL posted the 29-second video on YouTube last Tuesday, two months after Jackson died of cardiac arrest at the age of 50. The video features shaky camera footage following a coroner’s van entering what appears to be a parking garage. Once the van stops, a person opens the back of the van and helps Jackson out of the vehicle, leading him into a nearby doorway.

The video was removed from YouTube after a single day – but not before receiving 880,000 hits. Other Web sites have since posted the video all over the Web.

LiveLeak.com posted the video along with the follow description: “This video shows that Michael was still alive after his dead body was transported to the Los Angeles Dept. of Coroner I checked the license plate number and it looks like the King of Pop is jumping out of the same van, his dead body has been in. I got the original video tape from a trustworthy source. I know him for years. And I am sure it´s real and Michael is alive.”

RTL took credit for the hoax in an Aug. 26 report on its daily news show Explosiv. The video was filmed near Cologne, Germany, far, far away from the Los Angeles Dept. of Coroner.

“Unfortunately, many people believed it was true,” Schultz said. “Even though we tried to create the video in a way that every normal user can see right away that it is a fake.”

I’d really love to know how many people actually believed the King of Pop was the individual who climbed out of the van. Where is RTL’s evidence that “many people believed it was true”? Was the evidence collected from dumb YouTube comments? Nobody can take YouTube’s snarky, hateful comments seriously.

Sure, a ton of people watched the video and then passed it on to friends and coworkers (Pollstar.com is certainly guilty of posting the clip) but I’m sure most people forwarded the link to share how ridiculous the hoax was – not because they believed it was true.

Then again, every time the Internet rumor gets spread that Jeff Goldblum is dead, people are quick to start mourning the actor. I’ll even admit that I almost believed it the last time. But it was a crazy day; Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett had both already died! Who knew what was going to happen next!

Oh, and FYI – the “Jim Breuer Flips Out On Pizza Hut Commercial Shoot” YouTube video is definitely a viral video/ giant hoax.

Jackson is scheduled to be buried Thursday at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, Calif. His death certificate was recently revised to list the cause of death as a homicide, more specifically as “injection by another.”
 
Click here and here for the AP articles.

Click here for the Pizza Hut viral video.