Is Aine For Real?

Have been getting some interesting emails after posting this:

Restores My Faith in the Internet

The emails reflect the growing consensus that the Aine Chambers Silgozone site may be an elaborate hoax; more specifically a viral ad campaign for an as yet unnamed product.

Often, one's initial reaction when first viewing Sligozone is that it must be professionally put together; so coherent and consistent it is in its pastiche of Internet tropes both in design and content.

I must confess this was my initial reaction when viewing the site, but I made the intellectual decision to have faith in Aine, (the name itself can be seen as a giveaway - Aine is, after all, the name of an Irish Goddess of Fertility and a Fairy Queen).

We're in a very interesting time Dear Listener, when in this Internet mediated world we are both exposed, in the sense that our privacy is evaporating, (often by choice as in Letter to America), yet in counter-point we have the tools inexpensively available to create false personas and situations with ease.

Stay tuned as we explore the ramifications of both this reality of fakeness and the propensity in our world to now disbelieve the real.

Comments

[Alan]

Ah the conspiracy theorists are out in force. I would go along with this belief but for the fact that the domain was registered in 1999 and that's an awful long time for a marketer to sit on an idea.

[Jett Loe]

Yeah, that would be a hard-core hoax man... :-)...and of course, as you well know Alan, there are a few folks out there that think LTA isn't real and that we're actually podcasting from the Bay Area...

[the other Alan]

Maybe Aine's an elaborate hoax ... actually based in Westport!

[fústar]

Jett,
My first instinct on seeing the site was 'Hoax!', I must admit. It reminds me quite a bit of that "Turkish Bachelor looking for ladies and love" (or whatever it was) site that did the rounds a few years back, and that was later exposed to be a hoax (after everyone in the world had forwarded it to their friends).

I remain very sceptical...as it's all a bit too perfect a pastiche (if that, indeed, is what it is).

Why don't you email 'her' Jett and ask to do a phone interview?

[fústar]

Actually, screw that fence-sitting. I'm calling it: It's a hoax!

I'd put money on it (well, at least Monopoly Money).

[Jett Loe]

I have emailed her...she responded and...well, I'll talk about it on this weeks' show.

[Jett Loe]

By the way the Turkish site you mention was 'Mahir' and it was real - I've spoken to him and friends in Turkey.

[Keith Gaughan]

It's highly unlikely that it's a hoax. I stumbled across that site a year or two back when I was doing some historical research on my own locality in the south of the county. As a Sligoman, I'm pretty sure it's (embarressingly) genuine.

[Phil]

I too received an email from Aine. I believe in Aine!!

[copernicus]

Aine is so for real fústar. This is hidden Ireland at its best. Sligozone is irony free.

[Keith Gaughan]

No, some parts of Sligo are irony-free. The rest of us? Now that's another story.

[Wayne Ordinary American]

REAL!

[copernicus]

Sorry, Keith. I meant Sligozone.net and not the entire county, with some of whose denizens I'm familiar having done the whole UCG thing back in the day.

[Tom Thumb]

http://www.ainenudey.ytmnd.com/