so. on one of the very first days at my magazine internship (going by oh-so-quickly) i was assigned the incredibly heavy task of watching the movie shattered glass with hayden christensen. (alas, i have since gone blind.) anyways, the film tells the true story of stephen glass, a journalist for the esteemed new yorker magazine who created endless falsehoods and got away with them all....until he didn't. now, forgive me for judging a book by its cover, but i'm not quite sure how you could trust someone with a face so viciously sweet, a face that screams "psychopath!" right at you, without batting an eye. but i guess that's just me.
onwards. so the story that got peeps suspicious at forbes online was one about a 16 year old who had scammed millions of dollars from jukt micronics (don't fact-check me on this! i'm writing from memory, dear lord!). bells started ringing, and pigs started squealing, when those forbes kids were unable to find anything on this so-called multi-million dollar firm. glass panicked and put whipped up a little website (below) alongside suspect voice messages and soon enough the elaborate deception was shattered (yes, shattered!).
how did he manage to swindle an entire magazine's staff, you ask? well, editorial changes were being made, there was internal ruckus, and, since glass had been a fact-checker himself, he was well aware of what it would take to convince people of the veracity of his information. what the movie did to moi, was to whip me into a state of frenzy, convinced that i will somehow make a mistake while checking info and manage to be sued by a conglomeration of fortune 500 companies!
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