Students of George Mason University, as part of T. Mills Kelly's course, "Lying About the Past", created two popular Internet hoaxes: the "Edward Owens hoax", and the "Reddit serial killer hoax". The goal of the course was the creation of a widespread Internet deception. As Kelly stated in the course's syllabus:
What's our goal? Buzz, of course! Viral! We want our hoax to be picked up and spread around the Internet like wildfire!