The Little ARG That Failed

Between the giant banners advertising the D-9 alternate reality game (ARG) with anti-alien slogans, beyond the Dharma Initiative recruitment booth, there was a little stack of postcards at Comic-Con that read "You are being deceived — www.youarebeingdeceived.com." It was the calling card for an ARG that nobody saw. How do I know? Because io9 built the You Are Being Deceived ARG, complete with a phone number you can call and two mysterious linked URLs, as an experiment in marketing and mass deception. What happens when you try to deceive people but your lies are drowned out by better-funded lies? Allow me to recount our strange tale. Link