That radio broadcast did create a response from a small subset. But that response was from an insignificant, poorly informed, population and was quickly tempered with a minimal amount of effort.
I highly doubt it created a 'mass panic' with serious consequence, as if the average person believed Aliens were attacking earth due to a radio broadcast...
The fact it was false was immediately spreading among the newspapers:
> They immediately left the theatre, and standing on the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, they read the lighted bulletin that circled the New York Times building: ORSON WELLES CAUSES PANIC.
This type of thinking that we need to protect people has been causing comedians to needlessly apologizing for ultimately harmless art on a weekly basis.
There's a big difference between a piece of humour/fiction crossing the intended audience into people who miss the obvious humour/fiction and take it seriously... and actual malice.
I meant it was exaggerated compared to how many people actually panicked. Playing a fake advent of WWIII in a coffeeshop as if it is real to unsuspecting people might cause a different response though.
> If enough people tweeted about it, Trump might even be stupid enough to "react"
This reminds me of many years as a designer where many people new to design hear the platitude "don't make people think" and assume this is because people don't immediately think so you have to assume they are entirely dumb. But in reality people simply put a very low local amount of energy into day-to-day media/internet consumption. You have to assume they are disinterested, not entirely without common sense.
Interfaces don't have to be idiot-proof, they have to be easy to use (a big difference in practice). Compare the effort required to Tweet something vs a response to a serious incident.
Assuming anyone would buy this for longer than a few minutes is ridiculous, they are merely asking anyone around them or a simple google search away from the answer. To say the President would buy it puts you in a lower intelligence category than the falsely assumed average person is in...
A fake Russia attacking US ships (and escalation by European countries in NATO) BBC news story vs Trump campaign being spied on at the direction of people in the Obama administration is hardly comparable.
At most the serious problem is Trump has his own Android phone allowing him to make emotional tweets on demand without editorialization ala news papers or forcing him to take a timeout to fully consider the consequences. The difference between that and taking serious military action is significant, but sadly this distinction has to be made given the hyperbole spreading about the Trump administration...
Playing it loudly in a Starbucks or at the office for example.
Quite a brilliant piece of art.