I love a good subterfuge. It can be in the form of a hoax, fake argument, prank, magic trick or even an incendiary blog post aimed at hyping the public. Something surprising and unexpected is always a nice diversion from the daily grind. The latest ploy is a computer-generated image of a mysterious craft knocking about over Santa Cruz. The hoax started out as a winner by first being reported on AM radio. It then reached critical mass after arriving on the BoingBoing front page.

Details surrounding these pictures were convincing. The creators added plausible EXIF tags and PICT#### file names to give the illusion that they were taken with a Minolta Dimage camera. Next, plenty of people on the Net were backing-up the story with pseudo-scientific explanations that sounded believable. And, reports of other sightings exist at multiple conspiracy-nut websites.

Nevertheless, a few glaring mistakes were evident to keen-eyed netizens. The accounts of the would-be roustabout and all of his supporters on Flickr were discovered to be newly registered. Next, a CG-expert produced a clone of the alleged craft using 3D software in under 2-hours. Other detractors noted that the picture size was too small, the f-stop setting was implausible, and the weather was cloudy at the alleged location.

Sigh… This was so close to being a perfect ruse too. It had believable images, supporters on Flickr, and even a BoingBoing mention. Nevertheless, the whole story jumped the shark in less than two hours thanks to the wisdom of nerds. Hooray for the tubes.

UPDATE: Flickr user o_ashford speculates as to one possible use of the craft.