http://wingmakers.zeroforum.com/zer...924&page=16
GROUP TAKES CREDIT FOR AUSSIE BLOKE 'BLIND SKIES'
Posted By: Theresa <Send E-Mail>
Date: Thursday, 3 June 2004, 2:36 p.m.
(EDITOR) No way to verify whether this or any of the Aussie Bloke postings are real - passing this along for your own discernment.
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Posted By: Shiffee
posted on 2-6-2004 at 05:53 PM Post Number: 568940 (post id: 589634)
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/.../pg38
You are all to be commended for your exemplary performance these past several weeks. Your unwitting participation in BLIND SKIES has proven most informative, and quite frankly entertaining to many project members. To say that it got out of hand would be an exercise in understatement. We picked GLP precisely because it was out of the way, off the beaten path of usual internet surfers. It suited our needs perfectly. Unmoderated. Anonymous posting. We couldn´t have asked for a better testbed unless we had built it ourselves.
Rest assured, Elaine is in no way part of this. She is/was as unaware of the true nature of our experiment as the rest of you.
Our initial hypothesis was straightforward enough: Given the barest minimum of verifiable evidence, ordinary citizens of average to above-average intelligence could be duped into wholesale belief in a catastrophe scenario, provided there was ample corroboration from equally ambiguous, non-credible sources.
We never anticipated the myth spreading beyond the confines of GLP. When the conservative website, Bushcountry, picked up the story, we realized that our initial models had failed miserably to account for the ´word-of-mouth´ potential inherent in the internet. At most, we thought perhaps a few other fringe sites might get on board, but it´s obvious to us now that it´s only a matter of time before a mainstream media outlet syndicates this content, at which point the story will explode into something far beyond our ability to control.
In fact, it may already be there.
We should have spoken up sooner. This all moved so quickly, we just weren´t prepared to adapt to the monster we had unleashed.
For our own protection, because it´s becoming abundantly clear that civil/criminal litigation may result from this experiment, we cannot and will not identify ourselves, nor will we reveal any details that might readily be traced to us. We´re confident that using IP logs will prove frustrating for you, at best.
Because of the overwhelming success of this project, we will not be apologizing. You all behaved exactly as we had predicted, falling into 2 camps on either side of the issue. The believers held fast to every scrap of datum, whether it was credible or not. The non-believers grew frustrated and angry as their attempts to apply logic and reason were ignored. Anger and dissent grew and grew, and ultimately the entire story devolved into an unintelligible mass of contradictory assertions and accusations. We are acutely aware that even our own admission in this forum will be viewed as yet more hoax material, albeit more cleverly crafted and well-thought out than standard fare for these pages.
BLIND SKIES began with an idea. The now-legendary SNOWBALL INTERCEPT provided the impetus we had been looking for, the final piece of a puzzle that had been confounding us for the past 14 months. It was the perfect backstory for a disaster scenario that would be easily accepted. Few people have any real knowledge of astronomy. Fewer still know much about the socio-political environment that modern astronomers operate within, and when one of our members suggested using an invented Australian astronomer to further muddy the waters, we knew it was time to release.
To be honest, we have no knowledge of the validity and/or credibility of the so-called SNOWBALL INTERCEPT. We have no affiliation with it whatsoever. We only used its existence to further our agenda. That current world events have proceeded in such a way as to lend perceived credibility to our fiction is by no means our fault. Many of you fail to appreciate the power of coincidence. While we had anticipated that at least some activity in current events would affect the outcome of the project, we never expected nor modelled the possibility of so many "dots", as some of you have called them, coming together around our story.
We planted the seeds with NOTED & WARNED. Just enough credibility to whet your appetites. We did hire an astronomer to assist us with the final stages of BLIND SKIES, so that we could craft messages containing sufficient truth to warrant further investigation. Following up with AUSSIE BLOKE, we added fuel to the fire in the form of a fictional, curmudgeonly astronomer whose conscience had finally moved him to reveal the details of an impending catastrophe to a select group of forum visitors on an obscure website.
Some of you saw through the veil. Some of you, even after reading this, will continue to insist upon the reality of ´AB´. While we predicted that some people would continue to believe even beyond the scope of the project, we did not anticipate the enormous numbers involved. Because so many people remain convinced (and will continue to remain convinced, even after reading this), we elected to release this message as a means of covering our collective behinds from whatever legal fallout remains ahead of us.
We´ve told you it´s not real. We´ve provided you a credible, logical explanation as to why it isn´t real and given you some insight as to what its true purpose was. In our eyes, we have absolved ourselves of at least some of the guilt that is surely to be laid at our feet in the coming days and weeks.
AUSSIE BLOKE has taken on a life of his own here. Our last use of him was the ´vacation´ message. Similarly, NOTED & WARNED has not been used by us for several weeks, and yet forum messages continue to appear, ostensibly implying that they are from these purely fictional characters.
Many of you picked up on the PLANET X elements in our story, and that was intended, as well. There are already many believers in this (we are not among them), and they provided a reliable base group that we could reasonably expect to buy into our story relatively early on.
BLIND SKIES is not, as many have claimed, a ´PSY OP´. Although we have an affiliation with the government, our mandate was not intended to be any sort of disinformation campaign, mass brainwashing, or subliminal manipulation. We conducted a serious experiment to study the panic reflexes of a virtual community, and quite frankly the experiment ran away from us. AUSSIE BLOKE has now become our Frankenstein´s Monster.
We applaud the efforts of so many of you to find the ´facts´ behind the fiction. We were impressed by the fact that many people realized their lack of astronomical knowledge, and sought to follow AB´s advice and LOOK TO THE SKIES, and INVESTIGATE FOR YOURSELVES! We cannot say that we aren´t pleased with our role in inspiring a new renaissance in the field of astronomy.
Near Earth Objects are a threat to our planet, and someday perhaps there will be a scenario that closely matches what we created for BLIND SKIES. However, that day is not today.
We will continue to monitor these forums, along with many others, and we will continue to collect the data regarding your responses. Even the release of this message was factored into the experiment, however as we have already stated, we never anticipated releasing it to such a broad audience.
One interesting result that we had not considered was the various religous and prophetic threads that have spawned as a result of our experiment. One project member commented that it was encouraging to see that faith is not dead in the world.
And so, to you believers, I say be careful in what, and in whom, you place your faith and your trust. And, to you non-believers I say, continue to keep up the fight for truth and reason, because you are logic´s last line of defense.
With regards,
The Monitors
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/.../pg38
