Hoax within a Hoax within a Hoax?

[Elsa]

I think we would all agree that MJ has earned the right to observe the world away from the spotlight for a while, given that he has been on public display for a lifetime with people scrutinizing his every move and judging him without even knowing him personally.

Hi BlackJack.  MJ is observing the world out of sight, sure - but we know this isn't a retirement plan or even a leave of absence.  We see MJ fingerprints everywhere and on everything hoax related.    

As for the theories - yes the speculation has derailed sanity at times . There have been attacks on the integrity of hoax related people that have been unnecessary and sometimes -um - shocking.

I think as long as there are no character attacks, speculating about theories (like the doubles theory which does involve looking at physical features) could lead somewhere interesting - like the truth.

As for the hoax within a hoax within a hoax, that reminds me of the play within the play in Hamlet that re-enacts how Hamlet believes his Uncle killed his father.  Then there are the films (like Gilda, In Lonely Place and The Big Sleep) within a film (Smooth Criminal) within the TII movie.

We've heard a lot about Gilda but not the other films used in TII.  I've started preparing a post on it but haven't had time to look at them all yet.  :roll:

[suspicious mind]

I think we would all agree that MJ has earned the right to observe the world away from the spotlight for a while,

does this thought sort of fall into the  peter pan "to die would be a great adventure" idea for anyone else?

[jacilovesmichael]

I think we would all agree that MJ has earned the right to observe the world away from the spotlight for a while,

does this thought sort of fall into the  peter pan "to die would be a great adventure" idea for anyone else?

Yes!

[curls]

Ok, I keep starting posts on this thread, but then talk myself out of the idea I'm trying to present!

BlackJack said: MJ knows all about how to use the Power of Mystery : holding back, keeping things hidden and not giving EVERYTHING away, makes people WANT IT more.  I agree, he's done it all his life and he's still doing it now. I wonder how we are supposed to 'discover the man we never knew', when he's just giving us more of the same mystery/illusion etc and cranking it up several notches at that! Maybe that's the biggest hoax of the lot - that he doesn't actually want us to 'discover' him at all and that all he's giving us now is simply more of his supreme showmanship!

My head hurts too! 'Nothing's real, but all is possible!' All I know is he's got my full attention!

[RK]

The hoax labyrinth. Can be described as any confusing entanglement of things or events.    Not once in the past 15 months have I been able to decipher decode and deconstruct the illusion and say finally I understand the overall purpose going on here.  True there may be insight and enlightenment into one aspect  or another, but the playing field is continually  shifting and changing. I can relate to the lab rat analogy and this rat admits to volunteering for the duration even. So we get on the exercise wheel and run our little hearts out and find that when we step off, we are still here in the same place . There are also times I feel like  the  lazy slothful rat whose decided to park herself under the drip feeder and just keep her mouth open. So after 15 months have we discovered the man we never knew?  I think we "discovered" Mike when first waking up to the fact this is a hoax and now we are more exploring the labyrinth piece by peace.

[SoldierofLOVE]

is one person driving them all or did they get hijacked?

This is an important question.

[wishingstar]

Going on the thought pattern of multiple hoaxes.....
I suppose we have to ask is June 25 the first, second or third (or more) hoax?  Perhaps, June 25th was not the beginning of the hoax, but an additional hoax inside of another hoax type of thing..........where did it all really start?  I know we have threads that pertain to this.  It's always good to get a fresh perspective.  

Hope all are having a great day!
Blessings!

[TheRunningGirl]

Going on the thought pattern of multiple hoaxes.....
I suppose we have to ask is June 25 the first, second or third (or more) hoax?  Perhaps, June 25th was not the beginning of the hoax, but an additional hoax inside of another hoax type of thing..........where did it all really start?  I know we have threads that pertain to this.  It's always good to get a fresh perspective.  

Hope all are having a great day!
Blessings!

Absolutely and one way or the other "Elvis" is a hoax as well...  

With L.O.V.E

[Elsa]

Hoax within a Hoax within a Hoax?

...somehow reminds me of the film Inception where we have the concept of "a dream within a dream within a dream" and it takes a number of layers of inter-related dreams to really "plant" the idea.
Following the same logic, we have the concept of multiple hoaxes being linked to each other to unveil the truth--->
If MJ "died" on june 25th 2009 is one of the 3 hoaxes, what are the other 2 and how do they relate to the first one? (Hoax 2: the media is here to inform the public - Hoax 3: )
Am I reading way too much into all of this?

With L.O.V.E

The current hoax drama within the hoax death, within the hoax life of Michael Jackson?  

Ok, I keep starting posts on this thread, but then talk myself out of the idea I'm trying to present!

BlackJack said: MJ knows all about how to use the Power of Mystery : holding back, keeping things hidden and not giving EVERYTHING away, makes people WANT IT more. I agree, he's done it all his life and he's still doing it now. I wonder how we are supposed to 'discover the man we never knew', when he's just giving us more of the same mystery/illusion etc and cranking it up several notches at that! Maybe that's the biggest hoax of the lot - that he doesn't actually want us to 'discover' him at all and that all he's giving us now is simply more of his supreme showmanship!

My head hurts too! 'Nothing's real, but all is possible!' All I know is he's got my full attention!

Curls, I think this is a gradual unveiling of the truth - like taking off a disguise.   When Kenny Ortega said of Light Man 'and piece by piece by piece’ he can’t have meant a literal revealing in the TII concerts.  The meaning has to be figurative because Light Man could never have happened the way Kenny Ortega describes in the TII DVD.  If he had said Light Man was going to be raised at elevator speed to appear on the stage I would have believed that, but not that it was going to rise up from under the ramp and fly over the stage.  First, if you look at the structures above the stage, there wasn’t anything in place to allow for such a Peter Pan (cable assisted) adventure.  Kenny Ortega was concerned about the cherry picker, can you imagine the potential dangers and complications in flying the Star of their show above the stage in a nine foot suit of light!  Michael couldn't have gone into it from underneath after it landed because the stance of the Light Man doesn't allow for that.  

So if Peter Pan has flown over the 'stage' in disguise, then we see the glimpses and flashes, including the sunflowers, then the piece by piece by piece starts. What did Kenny say in his tweet about Peter Pan?  Don’t look for hidden messages?  Cause it's not a hidden message...?

[SoldierofLOVE]

Is there a possibility that the death hoax is a hoax?  

[Grace]

ever wonder if we need to examine ourselves about whether we are able to stand by what we believe or whether we are inclined to be pulled in every which direction by the influence of others.make any sense?

To be strong, Faith need to be near to "unshakable" so it does indeed make sense to examine the strength of the underlying beliefs.  If those are shaky then so will the Faith!

"Therefore, whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who build his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall (Matthew 7:24-27).

[Aintnosunshine]

Hoax within a hoax within a hoax reminds us of .... what?


Yes  -  THRILLER ...   remember the storyline / dramaturgy?    

Story in a story in a story  =  HIS story?

[SoldierofLOVE]

[center:390vknxo]"a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" — whose denouement has yet to be revealed.[/center:390vknxo]

[SoldierofLOVE]

Opinion: The Power of Mystery - Creating That 'Just One More' Feeling
by Brandon Sheffield
   
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September 22, 2010  
 
 
[In this editorial, originally printed in Game Developer magazine's September 2010 issue, editor-in-chief Brandon Sheffield discusses the importance of mystery in games, and how the unknown gives players the urge to see what lies around the corner.]

“Nothing is so frightening as what’s behind the closed door. The audience holds its breath along with the protagonist as she/he (more often she) approaches that door.” So writes Stephen King in his non-fiction book on horror, Danse Macabre.

King was not the first to make this point, nor will he be the last—with the right setting, the closed door, with all its possibilities, can be a frightening thing. Contrast that with an open door with light streaming through it, a traditional symbol of hope.

But the closed door nags at you—don’t you want to know what’s on the other side? The real power of the closed door is the mystery behind it. So long as it’s closed, the possibilities remain infinite.

That constant barrage of mystery is incredibly enticing to players, and is often directly responsible for that “just one more ...” feeling that many games aspire to.

This idea has been used in games for years, occasionally in ways that are analogous to the one King discusses, such as the simple build of tension you might see in the Silent Hill series. As the player approaches a locked door, disconcerting noises increase in intensity, and maybe the world begins to erode, as happens in the series.

The player has to go through the door, there’s no other way—but they almost don’t want to. The player is complicit in the act of approaching the door, which by turns increases or decreases the horror, depending on how much the player already knows. In film, the viewer is less likely to have advance knowledge of what lies beyond—but in games, we might have gone through the same scenario a few times, diminishing the effect.

Unrealized Dreams

Unfortunately, the payoff is usually not as exciting as that anticipation of terror. Essentially, the imagination usually cooks up something far more exciting than anything we can deliver as developers.

The concept is similar to the classic “Pavlov’s Dog” experiment, in which researcher Ivan Pavlov rang a bell (or gave some sort of other stimulus) every time a dog was given some food—over time, the dog would start salivating as soon as it heard the bell, regardless of whether it got any food, because it associated the sound with a reward. In games, as long as there are constantly new things to anticipate, the mind can continue to invent new potential rewards.
This is basically the way we condition players with things like treasure chests and monster drops. They know there’s something in there, so they’ll fight through hell and back to get to it, even if (in the case of JRPGs especially, but also in Western stalwarts like Diablo) it could be a trap, or a monster in disguise, or have some other sort of ill effect.

Over the years, we’ve come up with a pretty well-accepted formula for this, used (with some variation) by games from World of Warcraft to Persona to Borderlands. Chests will generally have something good in them—the excitement is in not knowing just how good it’ll be. This keeps players digging for more chests to get that epic loot. The same applies to items grabbed from felled monsters.

Taking it further, this idea of mystery applies to dialog-heavy RPGs like Dragon Age or the Persona series. Whenever the player is given a set of response choices in a dialog scenario, there is an air of mystery—how will the other character respond?

You generally have some sense of it—choices generally yield semi-predictable responses—but again, you don’t know just how it will affect your relationship with this character in the long term. Therein lies the mystery.

This not only helps strengthen the illusion that you’re building a relationship with a character (alongside positive and negative feedback, which both aforementioned games provide), it also keeps players digging to see what will happen. The “just one more” idea returns.

Mystery Versus Luck

This sort of mystery I’m talking about is a subset of luck. It’s far more specific, and as a result is easier to control. It can be frustrating in a game like Puzzle Quest to have your opponent hit you with a huge chain of “random” attacks, or to have your weapon randomly break in an RPG. That sort of luck can be frustrating. With the mystery of a treasure chest that may drop an epic weapon though, the outcome is always positive, which makes for higher engagement and less frustration.

Mystery isn’t always good though—choosing a difficulty level before you’ve started the game, for example, tends to lead to frustration.

Genres other than RPGs seem less able to use the more straightforward tricks. Borderlands is an exception with its randomly generated weapons found in treasure chests, but by and large FPS games have to rely on a set group of weapon drops from downed enemies.

So how do we get this “just one more” phenomenon in other genres? It’s a very “gamey” sort of interaction, which potentially goes against the realism many games strive for, but MMOs and some online FPS use the anticipation of leveling up in a similar way, and fighting and racing games often use unlockable characters or outfits. These are far less of an addictive gameplay element than they are a bonus, but the concept is similar.

In all, I think most games would be well served by including some element of mystery. It adds stickiness, and keeps players playing long after they might otherwise have stopped. It forms a strong link with the player, so that they keep playing “without knowing why.” Games that don’t do this tend to fall by the wayside. Seems an obvious choice to me!

[The September 2010 issue of Game Developer magazine, the sister print publication to Gamasutra and the leading U.S. trade publication for the video game industry, has shipped to print and digital subscribers and is available to potential readers in both physica/digital subscription and single-issue formats.]  

[Elsa]

Hoax within a hoax within a hoax reminds us of .... what?


Yes  -  THRILLER ...   remember the storyline / dramaturgy?    

Story in a story in a story  =  HIS story?

  :idea: Yes !!!