Is this International Hoax Week? Here is the second time I’ve had to deconstruct a hoax in a couple of days.
From the “Obvious Troll is Obvious” files…
Last month, one of my sources forwarded me a copy of a letter that was sent out to stylists and hair salons in North America on February 15, 2011, announcing a project “of truly majestic scope”. The letter was given to a journalist who declined to do a story because he recognized it was a fake, but did share it around and it wound up in my inbox.
The letter was on official looking stationery (as far as I could tell from a PDF) with not only the Enbridge logo, but the logo of the new project, which I read wrong when I first looked at it, becuse I thought the bird was a letter S. It’s not “myhairScares”, but “myhaircares”.
The letter purported to come from Dina Thompson, VP of Corporate Social Responsiblity, an Enbridge Vice-President whose name isn’t on the company’s website and whose division doesn’t exist. I’ve learned enough about the company’s structure to know whose name should have been on the letter as the signatory. The company is also referred to in the closing as “Enbridge Corporation”. And that’s entirely wrong, another indicator that it is bogus. The parent company is Enbridge, Inc. In the US, the company is Enbridge Energy Partners.
According to the letter, the project titled “MyHairCares” was based on last spring’s initiative to gather human and animal hair, stuff it into stockings, and turn it into absorbent boom to help in the Gulf oil spill cleanup. I heard about that project when a friend of mine, who had beautiful long, red hair, turned up with her hair in a buzz cut and told me she’d sacrificed it for the cleanup.
The hair, fur and fleece eventually filled up 19 warehouses throughout the Gulf area, but BP and the Coast Guard did not utilize it for the cleanup as engineers determined it was not feasible and could exacerbate the debris problem.
According to the letter, the hair was actually used during the cleanup in the Gulf.
The plan detailed in the letter, and the website stylists were referred to (www.myhaircares.com), was to gather human hair from the salons and weave them into “hair cushions”, which would then be stored in “special Enbridge warehouses the length of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline route, and at regular intervals along the Douglas Channel and entire coast of British Columbia, for effective quick-response use against possible oil spill events.”
I was unable to determine who owned the website so I found it not worth a story, and filed it under “Nice Try”.
Fast forward one month.
Today, on facebook, I found that whomever was behind it, had stepped up their game. In addition to the fake myhaircares.com website, they had also added a new fake site. This site spoofs the official website of the Northern Gateway pipeline project (www.northerngateway.ca) using a similar web address www.northern-gateway.ca.
Whoever designed the spoof site, did a very good job. It has the exact same look and feel as the real one, and if you roll over it, you can see that they linked all of the top-level navigation to the real site. The second-level navigation wasn’t linked, so you get an “error on page” message if you roll over those menus when they pop up, but it was definitely built by someone who knew what they were doing.
And on that fake site is the real press release, “Enbridge Partners With Hair Salons for Cutting-Edge “MyHairCares” Initiative“. Get it, “Cutting-Edge”?
The release states: “Enbridge developed the MyHairCares initiative after a significant spill in Michigan’s Kalamazoo River last year emphasized the need for real community synergy. Although the spill was successfully contained before serious environmental damage occurred, some residents suggested they would have liked to be more involved in the response process.
“Too often, oil spills pit communities against the company responsible,” said Dina Thompson Director of Community Relations. “That’s unacceptable to us, so we’ve developed ways to cooperate with communities from the outset, so that all of us together can prepare for the unforeseeable.”
The media contact is Dina Thompson, whose title has been changed to “Director of Community Relations” from Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility in the past month, and the company name has been corrected to “Enbridge Inc.” from Enbridge Corporation. Someone else must have noticed the mistakes in the letter. it gives a phone number and an email adress.
There is also a video, which is embedded from YouTube. It is also available for download with and without music.
The video features an interview with ”Trisha” the salon owner of Zinc in Vancouver, and both feature a stylist named Suzanne Weiss, who is quoted in the article. It also shows the logo of the purported salon on the outside of the building. There is a very upscale salon named Zinc in Vancouver. There is a stylist named Tricia, but not one named Suzanne (although they pronounce it Susan in the video-still no) and if you watch “Trisha” in the video as she talks, it’s clear from her body language (watch the eyes) she’s aware that she’s lying as she discusses “my hair cares”. She looks uncomfortable.
An obvious howler in the video is a clip of news footage shot from the air at 1:14. It shows oil flowing down a street from under the street. The voiceover is describing the Kalamazoo River oil spill, and makes reference to “over a million gallons” that “temporarily entered the Kalamazoo River”. It was broadcast by News 8 (their logo is in the corner) but it can’t have come from the spill here. Not only is their titling on the video stating “another Enbridge spill”, but that’s not what the spill here looked like. It was actually from the Romeoville, IL, oil spill, which did come from under a street and flow down it. The million gallons number has never been used by Enbridge, although it has been used by News 8.
All in all, it added up to a hoax that only the Governor of Wisconsin would fall for. Two weeks early, too. They really should have waited until April Fools Day to pull this stunt. Unless, as with Thanksgiving, they celebrate it on another day in Canada.
As far as I can determine, only one journalist, Damien Inwood, whose story was carried on at least 18 different newspaper websites across Canada, with the headline “Greenpeace slams Enbridge’s ‘hair-raising’ campaign” and carried statements, believed to be from a release issued by Rex Weyler, who is noted in some places as being from the No Tanks Coalition, as well as from Greenpeace. I was unable to find a copy of his release, but according to the article he had a few things to say.
“Greenpeace co-founder Rex Weyler is tearing his hair out at the latest PR campaign by Enbridge Inc.” and “Rex Weyler, co-founder of Greenpeace, calls Enbridge’s campaign to collect human hair to mop up future oil spills ‘absurd.’”
Weyler goes on to say, “I cannot believe they are saying this,” said a stunned Weyler. “It seems absurd. It seems like a joke.”
In his article, he quotes “Dina Thompson” which indicates that he must have called the number provided in the release and spoken to her.
According to Inwood, “Enbridge spokeswoman Dina Thompson admitted Tuesday that the firm knew people would scoff at the scheme. We went through this and we thought this is going to be considered the biggest joke alive but we’re trying to take an interesting angle,” she said.”
Both of them used the same word. “Joke”.
This further statement by “Thompson” should have raised red flags and set off some alarm bells, “We’re an oil company and our business is risky.”
Nobody who works for that company would make a statement in which they call Enbridge an oil company. Environmentalists, angry local residents, and unlearned media (of which I was once one) call them an oil company. It is not what they call themselves.
It is revealing that within a couple of hours, the stories were taken down from all the news websites that they ran on. You can’t really get rid of anything that’s been posted on the Internet, for they live on in Yahoo! News’ cache (this link may expire, but I did save a full copy for my archives).
The story also survives in a screen capture posted by Stephen Hui in an article on straight.com in which he also posted the response from Enbridge to the hoax. The man seen in the picture is Weyler.
Hui further quoted Weyler’s release, “Enbridge should trim their project not the hair of the nation to make British Columbians feel safer,” Rex Weyler, a No Tanks member, said in the release. “This outrageous campaign is just the latest of many feeble attempts to convince the public not to worry about the inevitable devastating consequences of oil pipelines and tankers on the west coast. Instead, it serves as a powerful reminder that there is simply no good way to clean up oil spills and that oil spills are inevitable in a project of this scope and daring.”
And then he contacted Weyler, who said that “that he didn’t know MyHairCares was a hoax when he provided his quote for the release. Asked if he knows who put up the hoax sites, the long-time environmentalist replied, “No, I don’t know who did.”
Hui stated that “Weyler noted MyHairCares is clearly a hoax and “kind of funny”. For us, any chance to talk about tankers, we’ll talk about tankers.”
Is it just me, or did he completely contradict himself in those two statements?
Hui’s article also quoted a media release issued by Enbridge in response to the hoax. It was very pointed.
“Enbridge Inc. was falsely associated with a fictitious oil spill safety campaign entitled “MyHairCares,” released by persons falsely identifying themselves as representing “Enbridge Sustainable Initiatives.” There is no such division, subsidiary, or department of Enbridge, and the individuals behind the spoof attack in no way represent the actual positions of Enbridge Inc. or the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Project.”
The release quoted Jennifer Varey, head of Media Relations, ““The so called ‘MyHairCares’ program was a fraud conducted by environmentalist radicals,” said Jennifer Varey, head of Media Relations for Enbridge. “It’s yet another ill-conceived campaign designed to terrorize innocent people into thinking our company is less than fully prepared for an oil spill. If an inevitable oil catastrophe does occur, we at Enbridge have rather more up our sleeves than a handful of hair.”
Pat Daniel had this to say, “We were troubled to see this irresponsible and dangerous hoax making light of the tragic impacts of the Gulf of Mexico and other oil spills, and demeaning the efforts of our Company to guarantee safety for the environment, people, and wildlife no matter where they find themselves operating,” said Patrick D. Daniel, President and Chief Executive Officer.
In another statement, this one on the real Northern Gateway website, Enbridge Pipelines spokesperson Gina Jordan is quoted as saying, “My hair cares” is a hoax and makes light of a serious issue. It is not an Enbridge or Northern Gateway initiative, and Enbridge deplores this cynical attempt to take advantage of public concern about the environment. Instead of working towards an informed understanding of the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline project, the perpetrators of this unethical campaign have trivialized last year’s tragic event in the Gulf of Mexico, where 11 people perished, for their own selfish purposes in a misguided attack on Enbridge’s reputation.
She goes on to say that, “Enbridge will vigorously defend its reputation, and is considering an appropriate legal response to this media campaign attack.”
So, the coverage has changed entirely from “Greenpeace slams Enbridge” to “Enbridge considering legal action”. And somewhere a journalist is hiding from the mocking laughter of his colleagues for taking the bait (hook, line and sucker)on this troll.
But, who was being trolled? Was it the media? Honestly, I don’t think so. Only one member of the fourth estate was gulled by this hoax, and for a campaign involving a great deal of time and money, that is a hugely, epic fail, because his stories were subsequently taken down. It’s also stupid, because when you piss off the media by treating them as if you think they are fools, there is a price to be paid.
And when you piss off a large corporation, by not only violating their intellectual property rights to their name and logos and web design, but also by having someone misrepresent themselves as being an official of the company, you are looking for some serious legal trouble.
And what did they get out of it? Nothing. Although we’ll see what tomorrow brings. Thus far the coverage is all about the hoaxing and nobody is criticizing the company’s statement, except for a couple of people on facebook.
What they did do, was basically a reverse troll. By engaging in this hoax and trying to sucker the media, whoever ‘they’ are (bets?) they revealed to everyone that they are willing to do anything, including lie to the public and the media, violate copyright laws, and misrepresent themselves, in order to shut down the Northern Gateway pipeline project.
And I don’t understand that. My mother was an environmentalist and a conservationist, as well as a journalist. She brought me up to understand the importance of clean water, air, and soil, and to be a good steward of our natural resources, but she also brought me up to be truthful and law-abiding.
Laura Adams
