Notes from the Field

AOL ad nauseam

What would a day on America Online be without a phony password theft alert or another bogus email petition against AOL policies showing up amidst the spam in your mailbox?

Don't get me wrong – I'm not suggesting that the fears piqued by this constant stream of misinformation are totally unfounded. Password theft is a serious problem on AOL, and the company's rate hike for unlimited access earlier this year caught many members by surprise and angered more than a few who were already disappointed with the quality of their service.

But failing to keep informed as to what the real problems are sets members up to be suckers for pranksters, of which there are plenty to be found among America Online's 13 million or so users [as of September 1998].

Case in point: the latest bogus petition to circulate on The World's Largest Internet Service alleges that AOL is planning to eliminate and/or charge extra fees for Instant Messages, one of its core features:

I've received quite a few skeptical inquiries over the past couple of months about an Internet company called Travelzoo.com, which for a time was offering free shares of stock to anyone who filled out a form on its Website.

The offer had all the appearances of a hoax or a scam, in part because of the proliferation of email messages like this one:

I must admit, it smelled fishy to me. But since no money was changing hands, it wasn't likely a scam; nor, once I'd visited the Website, could I find any indication that the offer was a hoax.

A shameless PR gimmick, maybe, but not a hoax.

As it turns out, Travelzoo makes its money by selling ad space on the Website, which offers an array of Internet travel services. The stock giveaway generated millions of hits, garnering the company instant, sure-fire revenues in the short term. It remains to be seen what will happen in the long term.

Will Travelzoo stock ever be worth anything? Experts agree that dividends are unlikely, given that few among even the most successful Internet companies have ever paid dividends to their stockholders. So, the deciding factor will be whether or not Travelzoo goes public one day, at which point the stocks could be traded on the market.

Patrick Crispen of The Internet TourBus spent two months investigating Travelzoo.com and concluded (to his own surprise!) that the company is legit. The fruits of his dogged research can be viewed in the August 6 issue of the newsletter.

The Stock Detective, a Website specializing in the investigation of market scams, also looked into Travelzoo and came to the same conclusion, although it did express skepticism as to the ultimate worth of the stock.

"Investors who are already in Travelzoo may eventually be pleasantly surprised, if they can trade their shares or get a dividend check," the article concludes. "For those of you who missed out, it will probably turn out to be much ado about nothing."

The free stock offer ended on July 30 when the distribution goal of 700,000 shares was reached.

'Urban Legend' - the movie

Word on the street has it that this upcoming Sony/Tristar/Phoenix Pictures release (September 25) is basically a rip-off of the ever-popular Scream and its sequel.

In both Scream and Scream 2, teenagers sit around discussing the ever-predictable conventions of horror films, then ironically fall victim to same.

Urban Legend begins with teens discussing well-known urban legends. Betcha can't guess what happens then...

Here's the plot summary:

CAST: Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Michael Rosenbaum, Joshua Jackson, Tara Reid

When a series of strange deaths occurs on campus, beautiful and assertive student Natalie (Witt) suspects that they are murders based on urban legends. Her classmates, loyal Brenda (Gayheart), ambitious journalism major Paul (Leto), and school practical joker Damon (Jackson), insist the deaths are just coincidences. When Natalie gets too close to discovering how the deaths are connected, she realizes she's the killer's next victim.

Feel any goose bumps yet?

Eh, neither do I.

Ain't It Cool News squeezed comments out of guinea pigs at an early test screening on August 7. Reviews from the mostly teenage audience were "mixed" – an industry euphemism for "most of them thought the movie sucked."

'Dead Man on Campus' - the urban legend

Another film with plot elements taken directly from urban folklore is already in cineplexes everywhere – the MTV Films/Paramount release, Dead Man on Campus.

It's based on a college legend of fairly recent origin to the effect that if your roommate commits suicide, you'll be awarded a 4.0 grade point average as consolation for your grief.

A lovely thought, but such is not the policy of any known college or university, nor has it ever been. As David Mikkelson writes in Grade Expectations:

[The rumor] most likely started out as an expression of the pressures students feel to achieve good grades in the form of a morbid joke (i.e., "Even if the pressures of school cause some people to off themselves, there's no reason we can't profit by it!"), and the joke became legend when it was spread as true by credulous students, picking up variations along the way.

Take this interesting tidbit of college folklore, add a generous dollop of Animal House, and you've got the scenario of Dead Man on Campus.

The central conceit of the movie is that a couple of freshmen who've spent too much of their first semester partying and not enough time studying decide that the only way they can save their college careers is by finding a suicidal roommate.

Sounds thin, doesn't it?

Here are some snippets from early reviews:

"...when the lights go up, we're left with a feature-length series of gags on college, suicide and depressive types that add up to absolutely nothing." – Dallas Morning News

"The dimwitted comedy amounts to a single, inane joke stretched into an impossibly thin 100- minute feature."
– Sarasota Herald-Tribune

"Compared to drinking hemlock, sticking your wet finger in a light socket or leaping from tall buildings, 'Dead Man on Campus' isn't that bad." – Fresno Bee

My suggestion is this: rather than fork over $7 (plus another $15 for a small popcorn and a Coke) to see a bad movie based on an urban legend, click on over to the Urban Legends Reference Pages and enjoy the real thing. There's a whole slew of hilarious and horrifying college legends over there.

Best of all, it won't cost you a dime.

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