This last semester, I was part of Mills Kelly’s “Lying about History” class at George Mason University. The first half of semester, we studied numerous famous hoaxes, including the Hitler Diaries, the Cottingly fairies, and those of P.T. Barnum. We did a ton of work, but honestly, that’s not what this post is about, so I’m just going to skip ahead a bit.

The second half of semester, we created our own hoax.

We took this part very seriously- discussing for a full week what story we would create. We tossed around ideas of creating the fake history of a common object, such as was done with the fake history of the bathtub in America. The class even talked about creating fake evidence of a “Squirrel Massacre,” the result of some villagers going slightly kooky over rodents and an economic crisis and killing all the squirrels in town. I personally was rooting for the “Rent-a-Baby” website concept that I came up with (derived from my own musings of being a future aunt).

We ultimately decided to create the story behind the Last American Pirate- for our own amusement purposes, interests, and excitement about trying to get Johnny Depp to talk to us about it. We wanted to have him work out of the Chesapeake Bay- a somewhat local place for us in NoVA. We would create a fake student who would uncover the story as her senior thesis project and write about it on a blog. We divided into three groups working on different aspects of the story: the technical group- coming up with details such as what boat the pirate used, the “sexy history” group- creating the story of the pirate’s life, and the modern day group- putting together all the multimedia and writing the blog and supporting modern documents.

I would like to say that all the details fell into place, but they didn’t. We all worked and pushed them into place step by step. It was hard. Most definitely the hardest project I’ve ever worked on. We were entirely self-motivated in our groups. We had to figure out what needed to be doing before we could do it, and had to figure out entirely how to approach each step.

I was in the “sexy history” group. We had to come up with the entire life story of who this pirate was and how he got into and out of pirating. I was one of the younger members of the class and I still have yet to take a class on historical research- I think that was a disadvantage here. I’ll be quite honest, I really didn’t know what I was doing or how I should do it most of the time. I ended up working on a number of things, but my most visible contribution was the “final will and testament of Edward Owens”- I wrote all but one or two paragraphs of that.

All together we made it happen. We put it together in I guess, a month and a half to two months. And it was fun! Tons of fun. The class was small, and we knew and got along with each other very well. Outside of class we’d always say ‘Hi’ to each other in passing and smile, like we were sharing a very very cool secret.

We planned to launch it in early December. The modern group had done a fabulous job preparing everything. We had a blog with lots of comments on it, several videos for the YouTube account, and a “victims” list with people we planned to pass word of the site to. We were ready.

The launch was the part of the project I was most worried about. As a young journalist, I couldn’t really afford to have my name out there prominently connected to a hoax. It wouldn’t have been as damaging to my career as a police officer’s participation in the most recent Bigfoot hoax was, but it would have definitely created some serious questions about my credibility. The class knew I was a journalist and my experience was discussed more than once to figure out how it could be put to use in the project.

I set some ground rules pretty quickly: I would not use my contacts at WPNI or anywhere else to get us coverage; I would not give out private e-mail addresses I had of reporters or editors at school or elsewhere; I would not use my name in disseminating the story. Period. Though some of my classmates pointed out that I could actually use my experience on the project as an advantage for job interviews in the future, I was still nervous. I really wanted to make sure from the start that my participation in this class would not lead future employers to question my trustworthiness.

After we launched the blog, we worked together to try to disseminate the site online. I’m pretty sure the fake student “Jane” had a Facebook account. We attempted to use Digg and some other similar websites to get it out there. A few classmates sent e-mails to pirate fan websites. I know the Wikipedia article sent some people our way. A flurry of e-mails were sent between Mills and members of the class that week, keeping track of where we found our project written about online.

I personally sent an e-mail regarding the site using an e-mail address I set up for a blog that I never ended up writing more than one post for to a USA Today blogger I had heard speak once in a class–Whitney Matheson. I read Pop Candy fairly regularly and had realized quickly that she had a humongous reader’s base. The e-mail stated that I read the site often, had found the pirate blog and thought she might be interested in it. I used a pseudonym for my name. She did end up posting a piece on the blog, which honestly probably gave us the greatest number of hits and the greatest amount of credibility for the project.

Our hits went up and down before school let out for semester. The project seemed to be successful. As far as I know, no one had questioned the veracity of our project at all.

After a few weeks, Mills sent an e-mail to the class asking that we post up our previously written Mea Culpa on the blog, officially announcing to the world that it was a hoax. I didn’t start reading the reactions and responses to the project until nearly New Year’s. Once I did, I really felt I should write this piece to let people know what a member of the class thought of it all.

I personally felt that this project was extremely fun, educational, and no means easy. This project challenged not only our research skills but our creative, organizational and analytical skills as well. Our work to cover our tracks taught me a lot about what to look for in a hoax in general. In addition, our use of technology to get the word out has truly made me more skeptical of what I read online now.

Ethically, the only doubt I have regarding my own participation in this project is the e-mail I sent to the writer of Pop Candy. I do not exactly regret that action, but I do question it every time I think of it. Though I did not personally know this woman, I purposefully set out to deceive her for my own gains, taking advantage of the trust she has in her readers. I apologize for taking advantage of her trust in such a way.

Though I’m sure some will question my feelings of guilt over this action when I was so willing to participate in the hoax at large, I make a differentiation between this action and the project at large based on the purpose and motive at the heart. My participation in the project was designed to educate and help me. The act of sending the e-mail to Matheson was purely for promotional purposes and the joy of hoaxing someone. I think if I had to redo this project over, I would not change any action I had taken here except this one–my own direct participation in a falsehood designed to mislead another person.

I now know a surprising amount of information on floating tomato canneries, bugeyes, punt guns, and pirates (I read a pretty long book on the subject).

I’m trying very hard not to shade what we did here. We lied, hoaxed, and used trust networks to deceive people. However, I know that every member of our class wanted to be there and, I would assume from class conversations, was at their own level of comfort with the ethical implications of the hoax. Mills was upfront with us from the start and was an incredible teacher, guide and friend during the semester.

And realistically, if people are still angry about we did: Just get a sense of humor and realize what the point of all this is- to help us and those who were fooled see how easily we can be fooled into believing what we read online. Anyone who seriously researched into our project would have seen the holes in it right off the bat. The only sources available that actually mentioned “our pirate” by name were a blog and Wikipedia. I definitely don’t think this project should have any effect on how professors allow their students to use online research in the future. The Internet is an incredible tool for research, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a history teacher allow me to only use online sources. A responsible student checks everything anyways.

Anyways, if anyone has any doubts, let me just say that this was a fantastic class. Thanks Mills.

Can we get Johnny Depp to come to Mason now?

Our class

For further reading:

The Last American Pirate blog- www.lastamericanpirate.net

Jane Browning’s account on Youtube, with all the videos made for the project- http://www.youtube.com/user/janebrowning

Discussion on the Wikipedia entry- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Edward_Owens

Mills’s blog entry on the class- http://edwired.org/?p=418

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s article (subscription only- booo) - http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/12/8876n.htm

Other people’s commentary on the hoax-

http://the-ed-rush.blogspot.com/2008/12/pirates-v-punks.html
http://doctorbs.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-do-you-know-its-true.html
http://supergradstudent.blogspot.com/2008/12/hoax-of-last-american-pirate.html
http://blog.ucsd.edu/ioc/2008/12/19/teaching-by-lying/
http://info-fetishist.org/2009/01/03/discovery-and-creation-and-lies/
http://www.hastac.org/node/1858