Some years ago, the great media hoaxer Alan Abel pulled off a hoax on The Phil Donahue Show that ballooned out of all proportion to Alan’s expectations. Alan is still pulling stunts on the media, got himself booked on the daytime talk show along with eight of his elderly pals. The show’s topic was gay senior citizens. What Donahue and the audience didn’t know was that Alan was planning a hoax called FAINT (Fight Against Idiotic Neurotic Television). Alan and his pranksters planned the scenario a week in advance. The scenario involved each of Alan’s pranksters raising a hand to ask a question to the gay senior citizens on stage. When Donahue held the mike for the question, each prankster fainted, pretending to be unconscious for 30 seconds. It was all a hoax, but soon enough, a really bizarre thing happened:
Members of the audience, who were not in on the hoax, began to faint. For real.
Even Donahue removed his coat, feeling hot under the collar. He braved on through the show, musing that the lights on the set must be too hot or that the air conditioning wasn’t functioning properly. After five audience members went down, Donahue evacuated the audience and continued his show without them. The broadcast ended ten minutes early that day. In fact, the joke was to see how long it would take the unflappable Donahue to cave in. Donahue finished the show as unflappable as ever.
The media had a field day with this story, which made the evening news and appeared on page 1 of the New York Post. The hoax was easy to verify because the participants all admitted their respective roles in the caper. The suggestive power of body language has never been demonstrated more convincingly.
If you want to see a video of the hoax, check out Jennifer Abel’s documentary about her father, Abel Raises Cain. It’s all there. Body language is truly contagious. When you start a negotiation, be positive — in your voice, in your stance, in your smile, in every aspect of your being. Others will pick up on it. That’s a fact!
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