For a B&B That Doesn’t Exist, the Online Reviews Keep Coming
by Stuart Miller
"One recent TripAdvisor review of the agrotourism destination Schrute Farms awarded four stars, lavishly praising the food, while another yielded just one star, casting aspersions on the owners’ sanity. This wild disparity is especially odd because Schrute Farms doesn’t even exist. The farm “belongs” to Dwight Schrute of the NBC series “The Office” (and his eccentric cousin Mose)." Read More
What if buried within TripAdvisor.com there were places that got great reviews but did not really exist?
Storyline 1: Anti-hero geek leader exploits a flaw in trip advisor to promote a non-existent travel place. Others catch on to the joke and really start building up this non-existent travel place. What happens next? Someone could create a real place based on the description. (that path needs much more work)
or The non-existent place gets such a following that Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, etc all want a piece of the potential travel dollars, figure out where the place must be based on where the "geek leader" posted the original listing from and travelers start heading to the "geek leader's" location in search of this "wonderful" travel location. What will happen when the travelers arrive? Will they figure that by some mistake of their own they somehow took a wrong turn and got lost on an adventure? or Will the "geek leader" scramble and somehow pull together a creatively concocted great place to visit? or Will people take the trip, return and praise the mythical travel place figuring that they lacked some quality that would allow them to truly enjoy this travel place that everyone has been raving about?
Storyline 2: These great travel places are mythical places that can only be seen by people that have a "need" to see them. This storyline may sound kind of flimsy but a whole lot of science fiction/fantasy works from a very similar foundation. Anyway, somehow individuals are singled out to visit magical mythical places. Wouldn't it be cool to book a trip to someplace that was created by the mind of some great fictional writer? This could be a children's story where instead of standing in line at Disney World your family goes to the places depicted in Disney's stories. Or maybe you could travel to some place and time in history. The magical mythical travel locations could be anywhere. The real question is: "Why are some people chosen?" . It could have a dark twist - maybe the vacation is a one way trip. This storyline has a lot of potential!
"PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. - Police say they charged a Pennsylvania man with public drunkenness after he was seen trying to resuscitate a long-dead opossum along a highway." Read More
Odd coincidence - Punxsutawney, Pa. is the hometown of "Punxsutawney Phil" - The Groundhog. That aside - how drunk do you have to be to kneel down on the side of the road and give mouth-to-mouth to a long dead possum?! Time to join AA Pennsylvania man.
Storyline : Drunk guy is drunk because he just lost his job and has had a unimaginably bad week - wife died in a car accident with their young children or some other really life altering event. He has given up hope when he passes a TV with a faith healing evangelist. Drunk guy would not normally pay much attention to such things but, because he is drunk, is riveted. The televangelist prays and says just enough that drunk guy thinks he is talking about him when the televangelist says that God will confer healing powers on this guy - "drunk guy." Drunk guy believes and vows that the very next dead thing he comes across he will use his new gift to heal.
Drunk guy walks out of the bar sees a dead possum in the road and kneels down to revive the possum. The police are on the drunk guy pretty quickly and arrest him. As drunk guy is leaving with the police he says something about the police not having any evidence. One of the policemen points over his shoulder and says that the recently molested possum is right there. The drunk guy and two police officers turn to look and there is no possum. The possum has come back to life and wandered off. The drunk guy still gets booked into jail but this is where the cool story begins.
"ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Authorities say a Virginia woman pretended to be an FBI agent and conned her neighbors into taking jobs as her assistants." Read More
In the real world there are people pretending to be something that they are not. If you look back in the Odd News Awards archives there is at least one guy that pretended to be a waiter in more than one upscale restaurant just long enough to collect payment and tip for the meals. Also in the Odd News Awards archives is an illegal immigrant that got tired of waiting in the system and started pretending that he was an immigration lawyer. I have overheard more than one person say that when they first started a new job that they had to pretend to know what they were doing until they figured out how to do their job. "Catch Me If You Can" is a pretty good movie about a guy, Frank Abagnale Jr., who in real life pretended to be a number of different people and had an adventure of life until the FBI caught up with him.
Storyline: A whole TV series could be written on the premise of people that decided to be something that they weren't. Who knows maybe this could be yet another "Law and Order" instead of "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" it could be "Law and Order: Identity Disorder". I am sure there is a better series title but, you get the idea. The crime story lines could develop just like each of the "Law and Order" stories of police and legal system discovering the crime and examining the all sub plots through the eyes of detectives and lawyers. Or forget the detectives and police - just tell short stories about what causes people to change who they are and how they pull off the transformation. Sometimes the pretend profession/identity change is discovered when an innocent is victimized or when some tragic event blows the cover and sometimes the reader/watcher/audience is left not knowing whether or not the new identity is ever discovered. The lady in the article above would have a very difficult time not being discovered as a fake FBI agent but maybe there is a pretend Doctor that is a General Practitioner that refers every single real problem to some Specialist or a pretend lawyer that has a bunch of legal forms that he is able to fill out correctly enough of the time where nobody notices. These Odd News articles of pretend professionals sure pop up enough to where you have to wonder if the reported pretenders are just the tip of the iceberg.
I put a link to just the title of this article because this one did not come from the Odd, Strange, or Weird news section of any news source. A San Diego couple with their two young children researched places to visit in Mexico, got in the SUV without even leaving food and water for their family dog, drove to the U.S.-Mexican border, parked the SUV got out and were last seen on border surveillance video walking across the border into Mexico in the dead of night.
I would bet that the family must be in danger and have decided to disappear. But think of the possibilities for fiction based on this news item.
Storyline 1: The couple have had several strange experiences with illegal immigrants either complaining about how easy Americans have it compared to life in Mexico, or telling the couple that they (the illegal immigrants) now own the U.S. and if they want a different life, they can go to Mexico; or illegal immigrants regretting coming to American when the real dream and opportunities could really be found in Mexico. Maybe the couple could witness/experience each of these stories that all add up to them committing to pack up and head south. We could track the couple either discovering the opportunities that really do exist in Mexico or maybe even further south in some place like Costa Rica and being changed by their experience and starting a movement that ends up changing the culture just a bit in their new country. Maybe even helping native Mexicans or Costa Ricans to see opportunities that they had previously overlooked.
Other possible story lines: Maybe the couple is on a mission to smuggle an immigrant friend's family into the U.S. Maybe the couple is a deep plant by the CIA to infiltrate terrorist groups gathering at border. Maybe the couple has just decide life is too short not to experience as adventurers.
Using these Odd News stories as sparks for fictional writing has been an idea from the inception of the Odd News Awards blog. Probably the more I begin to tap out a few story line ideas in posts, the better they will get. Who knows, maybe there is a best selling novel, a movie or TV series in some of these Odd News articles.
