Also see my more recent post: Happy Ending Foundation / Lemony Snicket Hoax: In Poor Taste?
So it wasn’t an April Fools’ joke, but it WAS a marketing ploy…and I admit I was taken in after seeing it on a library news site, hearing about radio reports here and overseas, and reading about it in several online news sites like The Daily Mail, Norwich Evening News and This Is London. And according to one of the comments in response to this post, Claire Hughes was supposedly on Jeremy Vine’s BBC radio 2 show today!
Thanks to super cyber-sleuth Sal Towse for posting the following in response to my last post:
“As a world-renowned (snrch) Web sleuth, I can tell you, not to worry. It’s pretty suspicious that all the Web hits for a seven-year-old organization seem to be from events occurring in October or slightly earlier =and= the only books specifically mentioned are Lemony Snicket’s.
So I hightailed off to godaddy.com and found that the Web site was registered in July and belongs to artscience.net. Over at artscience.net, I found that ArtScience is a clever advertising firm that has A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS as one of its clients.
You’ve been Handler’d.”
Thank you, Sal. And I have to give the company credit for a brilliant marketing move, though I have to wonder how the BBC and other mainstream media sources feel about being hoodwinked. Here’s what the Disclaimer at the bottom of the Happy Endings Foundation’s main page says in small print:
“Disclaimer: Most characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living, dead, or half dead, is purely coincidental. None of the non-fictitious people, places or things named in this website were harmed during the creation of the site. We’re not sure if the Loch Ness monster is fictitious or non-fictitious, you decide. We would like to state that some of the books recommended on this site are very good reads, particularly Winnie-the-Pooh. However, we would NOT recommend monster hunting at Loch Ness as a happy day out because a) it rains a lot in north Scotland and b) as previously stated, we don’t know if there is actually a monster to hunt. However, if you like logs then Loch Ness is a fine place to go log hunting.”
Serves me right for not reading the fine print!
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Very funny. Unlike the nasty, weedy Events books. Good children, bad end is what I say.
more evidence (I’m paranoid enough to want lots of facts before claiming there’s a plot): both artscience.net and thehappyendingsfoundation.org share an ip address (89.234.7.198)
It’s still been an interesting topic of conversation!
Hi!
I’m the one who posted about the Jeremy Vine show, it was on; and they even lined up Michael Morpugo for the rebuttal! If you go to the BBC website, to the Radio 2 section and into the listen again feature you should be able to hear it for yourself as long as you do it before Friday the 12th when it’ll be taken down. I’m sure it was on last Friday’s programme.
Thanks, Grace; I’ll check it out.
please dont burn the books they make us more copable with sadness
(whatever hurts you makes you stronger!)
so it’s training children to be copable with sadness as adults