"If I'm successful in fooling a wire service, I don't really have to do anything else to promote the story"
About this Quote
Pull one thread in the media machine and the whole sweater unravels. Joey Skaggs, a professional hoaxer with an artist’s instinct for weak seams, isn’t bragging about hustle; he’s describing leverage. A “wire service” is the circulatory system of modern news: once AP or Reuters (or any syndication pipeline) moves a story, thousands of outlets inherit it with minimal friction. Skaggs’ intent is brutally practical: aim at the distribution choke point, not the audience. If you can get the gatekeepers to bless a fake as “news,” the rest of the ecosystem will do your marketing for you.
The subtext lands harder: credibility is outsourced. Editors and producers often treat wire copy as pre-vetted truth, a shortcut in an industry built on speed, scarcity of staff, and fear of being late. Skaggs is pointing at a moral hazard baked into scale. The incentives reward repetition over verification; “everyone’s running it” becomes its own evidence. His line is a quiet indictment of how authority works: not as proof, but as a transferable asset that can be counterfeited.
Context matters, too. Skaggs came up in the era when outrageous, camera-ready stunts could be laundered into legitimacy through institutional hunger for novelty. Swap fax machines for social feeds and the principle barely changes. He’s exposing a loophole that isn’t about gullible individuals; it’s about a system optimized for throughput, where the easiest story to publish is the one someone else already published.
The subtext lands harder: credibility is outsourced. Editors and producers often treat wire copy as pre-vetted truth, a shortcut in an industry built on speed, scarcity of staff, and fear of being late. Skaggs is pointing at a moral hazard baked into scale. The incentives reward repetition over verification; “everyone’s running it” becomes its own evidence. His line is a quiet indictment of how authority works: not as proof, but as a transferable asset that can be counterfeited.
Context matters, too. Skaggs came up in the era when outrageous, camera-ready stunts could be laundered into legitimacy through institutional hunger for novelty. Swap fax machines for social feeds and the principle barely changes. He’s exposing a loophole that isn’t about gullible individuals; it’s about a system optimized for throughput, where the easiest story to publish is the one someone else already published.
Quote Details
| Topic | Marketing |
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