Media prank

In May 1927, Jean-Paul Sartre, who was known as one of the fiercest pranksters at the École Normale Superieure[1][2] organized with his comrades Nizan, Larroutis, Baillou and Herland,[3] a media prank following Charles Lindbergh's successful New York-Paris flight.

[5][7] One well-known 1967 prank, orchestrated by Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg and chronicled in Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night, involved a mock gathering protesting the Vietnam War (that many media took as a serious but misguided effort) intended to levitate the Pentagon.

[9] Among his many pranks, he convinced United Press International to report that cockroach hormones had been identified as a cure for arthritis, acne, and radiation poisoning, and tricked WABC-TV in New York City to create a news segment (which was nominated for and won an Emmy Award despite being untrue)[10] about a supposed "cathouse for dogs".

[9] During the late 1980s members of activist group Grevillea hoaxed Australian journalists by creating a fake organization called LILAC WA (Ladies In Line Against Communist Western Australia).

The band, as an excuse for cancelling an upcoming tour, issued a press release claiming that a teenager who had committed a multiple axe murder did so after arguing with his parents over the meaning of its song, "Christianity Is Stupid".

Despite the company's release of an official statement declaring the name change was an early April Fools' joke, CNN, NBC News, and The Washington Post fell for the gag.

As reporters congregated outside Twitter headquarters on the day Elon Musk took control of the company, the instigator, playing the fictional role of Rahul Ligma, "thought it would be really funny" if he and a friend "walked out with a [cardboard] box and they fell for it.

[24] Blake Shuster wrote in USA Today that the journalists involved were "duped by real life trolls" and "all it would’ve taken was 30 seconds to stop and actually do their jobs to avoid the whole news-cycle".

[21] The following month, Musk called their October media stunt "one of the best trolls ever" and continued the joke by apologizing for "firing these geniuses", facetiously saying it was "truly one of [my] biggest mistakes" and offered them their jobs back.

[30][31] Looper said one of the fake commercials released to the press, featuring the hoax doll's "Pussy Riot Accessory Pack" that contained Molotov cocktails and zip-tie handcuffs, "should have raised editorial eyebrows".

In 2019, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, was quoted in a video stating, "Imagine this for a second: One man, with total control of billions of people’s stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures”.