[Indizine]

After hearing it was a hoax I immediately figured that this was an attempt to gain publicity by the artist, as pointed out in the Your Say message box below that article:
"Sarah,

I think you and many others are guilty of being rather naïve in falling for this story.

What you have is an Artist seeking self promotion by using one of the oldest tricks in the book, exploiting our sentimentality for cruelty against animals.

It's been done before and no doubt will be done again. The internet ensures these hoaxes travel much further and quicker than before.

Now this Artist has raised his profile and ensured his work is more bankable I wonder if he will use his new found wealth to tackle the human suffering he would accuse us of ignoring or fatten his own bank account."


I dont see the discussion merits being locked because it has not caused a fury here and all sides are welcome to an opinion.

[Sam (Mr. Mu)]

Originally Posted by Lions Den Computers

http://www.stalbansreview.co.uk/news/2234214.0/

Again I'll point to this article as the 'best' proof that this was little more than a stunt.

The irony is that the authoratative source quoted is a journalism student :-)

This is the unconscious 'mexican wave' of the internet. People do it because they can. It's like putting logs on the rails just to see what happens. Ultimately, what it does is it just shows how reactive and angry we are as a species.

Conventional mass media has been doing it since the printing press. Goebbels did it rather well in the 1930s... The internet does it all the time (because you don't even have to invest in the price of ink and paper to get millions of reactive people into a froth).

Yes, there are people committing acts of terrible cruelty towards animals every second across the world. And towards human beings every second, too.

What I think the student reporter got right is that most people sitting at their computers are sheep: unconscious, uncritical, unaware and reactive: ripe for exploitation.

If that sounds a bit over the top, remember that all it took was a tiny bit of critical thinking (instead of reaction) to dissolve this story but that some people would have strangled the 'artist' first.

That's what these reactive hoax petitions ultimately prove.

[Lions Den Computers]

Yes, I could find nothing else that seemed less 'reactive' which I think illustrates your points nicely.

I couldn't have put it better myself!