As noted earlier there were three blatantly fake one sheets posted at the above-mentioned site which drew heaps of scorn since their status as forgeries were pretty obvious. Brad, the “administrator” of the site, has since deleted the entire post rather than leaving it up and owning up to his mistake (if it was a mistake and not a cheap ploy to get hits).
Here’s what commenter UnseenPresence at Unfiction had to say about Brad and his site:
…The posters are fake. There is no legitimate trail to track them back to a source–the ‘news’ site got it from a kid on Myspace who can’t remember where he got it from.
Dead end, badly photoshopped=99.999999999% fake.
As for the rest of the 1-18-08News site, I’ve looked at several of the videos over the past few weeks, and they have already been -very- wrong.
The ‘email from a legitimate source’ doesn’t appear to be such to me at all. Moreover, it’s clear that the gentleman posting things at that site doesn’t verify sources well, if at all.
So I’ve got no reason, so far, to believe anything at that site, and lots of reasons not to do so.
Other commenters at Unfiction feel the same way.
So, why am I harping on Brad? At best, he is so eager to be the center of Cloverfield-related attention that he doesn’t bother to check his sources — which is lazy and irresponsible. At worst, he’s a liar who isn’t just perpetuating hoaxes but manufacturing them, and not only does that bother me morally and ethically but it screws up the Cloverfield viral marketing campaign for all of us.
If the campaign succeeds, the movie will be successful; that increases the likelihood that Bad Robot can entertain us with future tv and film projects. All of the Brads out there muddy the water, which makes fewer people want to swim in the campaign and hurts the movie’s prospects.
That’s why I’m harping on Brad and his hype-filled, content-lite website.
Slusho
Cloverfield
1-18-08
