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Preorder Scientology Lulz Now
Forgive us if we’re breaking rules 1 and 2, but it didn’t take us long to figure out that this fake Wii Battletoads website (site has changed, see Google cache for original) was a viral marketing campaign against the Church of Scientology‘s “Fair Game” policy.
This past Saturday marked the latest “in real life raid” against the Church. This wave of protests focused on a memo issued by L. Ron Hubbard in 1965, which gave the green light to harass critics of the church, saying critics “may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.”
The telltale sign that the Battletoads video was fake was not just the fact that every clip was stolen from other games, nor that the voiceover sounds like a monster truck rally announcer, but the fact that the 416 number listed on the site (if you refresh the page enough) is that of the Toronto branch of the Church of Scientology. The website urges the prospective caller to ask about the “Fair Game” policy.
As for the protest itself, well, it seems like each one is getting closer to irrelevance as the series goes on. Yes, it is true, there may be members of Anonymous (“anons”) protesting the church in small numbers almost every week, but this last one seems like it was the smallest global action yet. Check out some Flickr shots from Saturday’s raid. If Project Chanology really wants to succeed in the long run, and attract non-4chan members, they are going to need to come up with something new.