A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real. Generally there is some material object involved, which is actually a forgery. Unlike a fraud or con (which usually has an audience of one or a few), which are made for illicit financial or material gain, or a pious fraud, which is perpetrated to support the revelations of a religion, a hoax is often perpetrated as a practical joke with a humorous intent, to cause embarrassment, for personal aggrandizement or to serve political purposes. Still, many confidence tricks and the like have also been labeled as hoaxes.
Many hoaxes are also motivated by a desire to satirize or educate by exposing the credulity of the public or the absurdity of the target: literary and artistic hoaxes are often of this sort, although political hoaxes are sometimes motivated in part or whole by the desire to ridicule or expose politicians or political institutions.
The status of a given factoid as reliable or hoax is often the subject of considerable controversy.
Orson Welles' Mercury Theater radiobroadcast on October 31, 1938, entitled "The War of the Worlds" has been called the "single greatest media hoax of all time," though it was not intentionally so, and thus does not rank among genuine hoaxes. The broadcast was heard on CBSradio stations throughout the United States. Despite repeated announcements within the program that it was a work of fiction, many listeners believed that the world was being attacked by invaders from the planet Mars.
Bathtub Hoax, perpetrated by American journalist and satirist Mencken in the 1920's, was credited even after it was exposed by the author.
A New Zealand tradition is the capping stunt, wherein university students perpetrate a hoax upon an unsuspecting population. They are traditionally executed near autumn graduation (the "capping").
