A few days ago someone called me up to tell me about an amazing story a coworker had read at Yahoo! News. Aparently the SEC had arrested a man for suspected insider trading after he profited on many high risk investments over a short period of time. The amazing part was that the man claimed to be from the future.
Now when I first heard this story I remember saying, "Wow, that is almost weird enought to be believable." So I went to Yahoo! News and looked at the story. I read a couple times and then I noticed a little line above the story. It said "Weekly World News". You know the Weekly World News. Their the super cheep supermarket tabloid with the completely outragious headlines like "Alligator Boy found in Florida".
I thought this might be a limited incident, just a few people not seeing the Weekly World News credit. But apparently it is a wide spread dupe. I have seen it on Slashdot, This Modern World, and apparently a lot of other people were duped as well.
So what is it about this story that caused so many people to be duped by it. Is it a fascination with time travel, our fascination with get rich quick schemes, or was it just a slow news week.
Posted by Noah Brimhall at April 18, 2003 08:54 AM