Are people really that gullible?

I was scrolling through the yahoo news headline feeds today and ran across the headline “Shyamalan’s ‘Secret’ Hoax”. The article comes from an E! news feed, and details the fact that the so-called “unauthorized documentary” of filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan which will run on the SciFi channel was a hoax. If you’ve seen the ads and have half a brain, you’ve already figured out that the “documentary” is really just a marketing ploy in the style of Blair Witch.

What’s surprising to me is the notion that people didn’t catch on to the setup. Did people really buy into the ad and start thinking Mr. Shyamalan is a closet monster or something?

—Jul 19, 2004