Clandestineplot - "Space Cowboy" Hoax

On July 8, 2007, nine girls (robdyrdek, wisefools, gloomies, blankwavearcade, scheme, looseleaves, receiving, horridratings, nightwellspent) in an AIM chat room decided to have some fun. It just started with pranking the livejournal community anonquestions with anonymous rumors just to get the pages going. For some reason, even without source links, this rumor was believable! Maybe it’s the genius fact that PATD are the NSYNC of our day and that Travis already rapped on a shitty pop song (Snakes on a Plane – Bring It!). But just 3 sentences changed the internet forever:

Panic! at the Disco is set to record a cover of *NSYNC's "Space Cowboy" featuring Travis McCoy of Gym Class Heroes. Several other bands will be involved in the recording of this cover album of pop songs. A release date has not been set.

Anonquestions was the first target, and was actually hit twice. We never thought that they would believe it, especially since almost everything in that community is bullshit rumors. But they did! So us nine livejournal users (with a little help from frankensteins and mormonisms) decided to just roll with it and see how far this rumor will go. We ended up pranking a good portion of the Fueled By Ramen fandom. As of now, here are all the communities this hoax has been spread to (keep in mind there was NEVER a source link).


- Where it all started: original thread
- Also: original thread
- Shitlist: original post
- Divierto @ greatestjournal.com: original post
- Weloveit: original post
- Topicless:original post
- Schleptastic: original post
- P!ATD: original post
- LOLWentzFucks: original post

After that, we decided to actually make our hoax legit and get it into absolutepunk.net, ohnotheydidnt, and any other gossip/news blogs we could:

- Absolutepunk.net general forum
- Absolutepunk.net News SCREEN CAP SINCE HE DELETED IT HAHA
- Ohnotheydidnt

With the “legitimate” news sources in hand, there was no stopping the hoax!

- P!ATD Wikipedia
- Icrecreamheadaches
- Gym Class Heroes Wikipedia

We were actually going to reveal this hoax a lot sooner until it got on the NME website and Yahoo News ! But eventually we decided it was time to let this go. This rumor accomplished so much more than what we originally thought. The lesson of this story is:

- If you put anything in italics, it will be believed, regardless of if there is a source link or not.
- Jason Tate does not fact check.
- People are actually psyched about a *NSYNC cover? Really?
- FBR fans are an….interesting bunch.
- NME will post anything from a user that registered an hour before posting. Yeah, that’s not suspicious at all, right?
- It’s extremely easy to spread information that is blatantly false across the internet. Way too easy, in fact.

Our small community prank quickly turned into a complete internet hoax. Our goal was to get P!ATD management, Pete Wentz, or a member of the band to comment on it, and they did (EDIT I guess this isnt clear - PATD management released some sort of statement that the cover was false. Our goal was for just one of the above to recognize the rumor existed). Honestly, this entire glorious event has made me wonder just how much of what we read on the internet is complete and utter bullshit. It was startlingly easy for a small group of girls to start and maintain an unsubstantiated rumor. We had no real and credible sources. We linked everything in circles and managed to dupe 99% of the people who read the news. We are kind of disappointed in the lack of fact-checking by Absolutepunk and NME. While it probably wasn't right for us to make up a rumor and see how far it could go, it certainly proved that these music websites don't really seem to care if the information they post is accurate, as long as they post it first.

In conclusion, yeah we might be a “bunch of people with way too much time on their hands,” but who are the idiots that believed it? Exactly. And the whole "you guys need lives argument" is really not applicable, since each one of us posted it in one place and Absolutepunk & NME ran with it.

Love,
Clandestineplot @ livejournal.com
(Happy Lurking!)

PS – Everything that has been done has been saved, regardless of if they get deleted or not. Don’t act like you weren’t fooled. And if P!ATD or Schleprok actually end up covering that song, we want 50% of the profits. Or a good portion of Schlep’s hoodie collection, which ever is greater.

PPS - Only the members/maintainers were involved in this. Anyone else trying to credit is a goddamn liar. But this whole thing was "immature and pathetic" so you wouldn't want to take credit in the first place, right?