The Weirdest Hoax on the Internet

[Music] it's 2012 two board students from the UK come up with a prank and decide to put it online the LIE itself is harmless it's actually pretty funny and kind of obvious but it takes on a life of its own the whole thing blows up and escalates into what might just be the biggest lie on the internet school presentations museums and TV shows start picking up on it for years the two students are just sitting at their computers and watching their prank escalate further and further their lie even gets close to making it on the

British 50b note this was such a small small small lie on the internet and it blew up into such a big thing though it went much further than we ever imagined how could things go so far how did the two friends manage to create a lie believable enough to last a decade and how does it all relate to the inventor of the electric toaster Fern in Ju 2022 a 15-year-old named Adam is browsing a Reddit form called hilarious edits found on Wikipedia its users share Wikipedia articles that have been edited to create funny alternate facts

Peter grien becomes an Islamic Prophet Barack Obama turns into an urban fashion model and a 12-year-old declares himself Prime Minister of Australia Adam suddenly recalls a strange photo he found a while ago on Wikipedia it's an image of the Scott Allen McMasters the inventor of the electric toaster if you look close enough you can immedi medely tell the photo has simply been manipulated to look that old the tiar looks too perfect to be real there's no way this could be the actual photo of Alan McMasters the famous engineer born back in 1865 Adam decides to

make a Reddit post about the photo of the man who invented the toaster he claims it's fake Adam's post receives countless upvotes and triggers a chain reaction the debate about the image of Alan McMasters eventually makes its way up to a form on wikipediocracy that's a website where people discuss and criticize Wikipedia content the website is also frequented by Wikipedia editors Who start getting curious about the creator of the toaster they discuss the authenticity of the photo and reevaluate the entire article one of those wikipedians checks the image's metadata and detects that it had been

in fact edited with Adobe Photoshop CS5 on a Mac the photo definitely is a fake but it's not just the photo that's a fake McMaster supposedly died in 1927 the truth is he never existed hello I'm Alan McMasters an engineer but not the inventor of the toaster the real Alan McMasters is well and Alive 30 years old in working as an aerospace engineer and he helped us wrap our heads around the entire story so in the first year of University during class one of the professors was teaching us about research skills and he said now

you need to be careful not to use Wikipedia to Source information because you never know who might set themselves as the inventor of the toaster meet Alex alen's friend and classmate from University and we decided well why don't we go ahead and go on Wikipedia and set ourselves as the inventor of the toaster that was on February 6 2012 at that moment Alan McMasters goes from being a random student to being the inventor of the electric toaster and he will keep that title for quite some time just a couple of months later there's an article

published by British ID The Daily Mirror The Story covers life-changing everyday Innovations made by British citizens and guess who's on that list the madeup inventor of the toaster Alan McMasters and that's when I got curious how far can this actually go and so I decided to create an entire article just about Alan McMasters the inventor of the toaster Alex creates a Wikipedia article and flushes it out with all kinds of ideas and details that just randomly pop up in his head like how invented the toaster by drinking too much whiskey and how he accidentally killed

a woman and all these crazy things we thought no no one's going to believe this his toaster goes on to provoke one of Britain's first deadly Appliance fires killing a woman in the town of Guilford McMasters denies any wrongdoing according to him the woman did not hold appropriate respect for the power of the electric toaster when leaving it unattended McMasters has also developed the lighting system for the London Underground and invented the electric kettle naturally every decent Wikipedia article needs a photo so to boost the page online cred Alex uploads an image of himself my

girlfriend sort of you know styled my hair wonderfully so it was stuck up you know really high and looked like some sort of crazy 19th century thing actually at the time I didn't have this Sideburn so we Photoshop some sideburns and since they didn't have any appropriate 19th century apparel they decided to edit this tier in into the photo so you couldn't see the clothes and then put a bunch of black and white filters on it it looked ridiculous no one should have believed that this picture was real and yet no one questions the authenticity

of the photo or the information in the article if only all frauders online were as good-hearted and funny as Alex and Allen but seriously there are quite some threats on the internet some of them involve our most sensitive information there's actually a massive Shadow industry worth billions surrounding our data so-called data brokers gather all the info available about us on the internet your contact information browsing history and online transactions this data is often bundled into Shadow profiles which are then being sold you might receive a tailored mail or a robo call based on your Shadow

profile in the worst case someone might try to steal your identity incog helps you remove your data from the numerous lists of data Brokers here's how it works one you create your account and two Grant incog the right to act on your behalf and finally three in cogni then reaches out to data Brokers and requests the removal of your sensitive information in the dashboard you can always track exactly what the current status is with the code ferntv and Via incog docomo plan Wikipedia articles are checked by volunteer editors called wikipedians to ensure that pages are

legit they look at their sources their writing and suspicious changes this system tends to work pretty well but for some reason the editors miss the invent of the toaster over the next few years many websites pick up on the story of Alan McMasters several media Outlets spread the LIE even further including the BBC and the Washington Times school kids do presentations on him museums and books officially credit him as the inventor of the toaster many of these references are cited as sources in the fake Wikipedia article to make it look more authentic creating a loop

of misinformation a primary school in Scotland honors McMasters with a special Memorial Day students are asked to write texts about him paint toast slices and handcraft their own little toasters contestants in the British cooking show Great British menu dedicated dessert to the great inventor of the toaster so this is The Breakfast Club and it's inspired by Alan mcmas invention of the first electric toster bread companies in the UK were tweeting about him and using my picture people were tweeting about Alan talking about how they were so thankful that he invented the toaster that he trans

form the the life with their breakfast um it just went on and on we couldn't believe it in 2018 the bank of England even nominates Alan McMasters for the character selection for its 50b note so it would have been my face on the 50 note back in July 2022 15-year-old Adam finally detects the fake image within 24 hours of his Discovery the article in Alan McMasters is proposed for deletion shortly after there's a hoax Banner on the top of the Wikipedia page users trying to look up the article in Alan McMasters are automatically redirected to

a page on misinformation and hoax articles despite their prank the two former students remain big fans of the online encyclopedia Allan told us that he became a part-time Wikipedia himself editing articles and correcting mistakes to sort of make it up to Wikipedia and support their mission he does however prefer to stay Anonymous I think they would ban me if they knew which account was M if a lie so blunt and simple can circulate on the internet for such a long time this makes you wonder what else is wrong out there Wikipedia still is a pretty

reliable and helpful source of information and the toaster incident remains a fairly rare exception but the Alan mcmaster's case reminds us of just how important it is to double check online information the story is a perfect example of what is called circular reporting someone edits incorrect information into a Wikipedia page a journalist draws on that fake info without checking it an editor then reviews the Wikipedia page finds the journalist article and cites it as a source for the fake information Wikipedia keeps a whole list of incidents like these meanwhile the article on the inventor of

the toaster has of course been corrected now the actual history of the invention of the toaster is much better sourced people have credited the real inventor now and so yes for 10 years there might have been the wrong inventor but who knows for the next 100 years they'll be the correct invention don't worry of course we're going to tell you the toaster was invented in 1909 by an American named Frank shayer at least that's what it says on Wikipedia