Mysterious 'October Suprise' website a hoax?

The now-deleted community post advertising "October Surprise" website on Buzzfeed on Thursday afternoon.

A mysterious website touting a secret document that would make for an "October surprise" went online this week, counting down the minutes until it would reveal a nasty revelation about either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.

"One of your presidential candidates isn't being honest with you. Stay tuned to find out which one it is," the site ominously warns.

Speculation about the site has spread throughout Twitter, through both its handle @Octsurprise and the hashtag #OctSuprise. The page then appeared in a community post on Buzzfeed, taken down later in the day; similar posts appeared on Daily Kos and WhatIsOccupyWallStreetAbout.com, before the user accounts were deactivated.

On October 22 at 5:30 p.m., the site promises to blow up the presidential race. But observers are already skeptical about the blurry, scanned documents, and some investigating by Polickter.com point to a viral marketing campaign, connected to Animal Planet's upcoming, satirical "pet election."

Taking a lead from users at the tech forum Fark.com?who traced the IP addresses of the accounts promoting the page?Politicker tracked down two web developers who are likely behind the October Surprise site, Jeff Hopwood and Anthony Maro.

The pair have a history of large-scale Internet hoaxes: their names are connected to a huge prank from 2007, when a site counting down to release advance copy of Radiohead's In Rainbows unleashed on 20,000 subscribers? one of the oldest and most infuriating Internet memes: the RickRoll.

As the Fark.com users followed the breadcrumbs, pages connecting Hopwood and Maro to the 2007 incident disappeared from the Internet. But before long, their LinkedIn accounts were under scrutiny, and Politicker found that they are both currently working as developers at Discovery Communications, the distributor of Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.

This would seem to lend credibility to the rumor that the entire site will end up as a promotion of Animal Planet's "pet election."

Hopwood and Maro claim they have no idea who is behind the site and that they are only developers. They do claim to know the numbers of page visits, bragging to Politicker that they have reached 100,000 in only a few days.

At the same time, the Twitter account of @OctSuprise retweets users who express interest or disdain at the candidates?but has ignored and blocked skeptics and those presenting the links between the site and Hopwood and Maro's past.

If the site remains up, only time will tell if it is a hoax or a genuine leak. Come October 22, screens around the country will either fill up with real scandalizing documents of the presidential contenders, or, for some, a potentially more upsetting image: the sights and sounds of Rick Astley.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/mysterious-october-suprise-website-hoax-202212204--politics.html

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