Fake Fans, Fake Buzz, Real Bucks: ‘The 34-year-old computer whiz in Silver Lake got a
phone call from the friend of a friend–the head of publicity
for a movie studio. The offer was $10,000 a week for an
Internet “project.”
Was he interested? Absolutely.
Details quickly followed from the studio’s department of
new media. The computer whiz discovered he would soon
be “purposely forgetting everything I knew about design.”
The job was to construct a phony fan Web site for a new movie.
He selected ugly lettering, the better to mask his sophistication. He scanned in
photos from magazines, just like fans do. He wrote blushing and gushing copy.’ LA Times