Fanboys Anonymous

On March 4th, FunnyOrDie.com played a practical joke on the nerd world: hoverboards are real! There was a video (very well produced, by the way) featuring Billy Zane, Moby, Tony Hawk (who would have clearly been the perfect spokesperson for the supposed product), and none other than Christopher "Doc Brown" Lloyd.

Well played, T.H.

Clearly some people took the whole hoverboard thing seriously; I myself was guilty of doing so until the first minute into the video. Then they went hog wild and had random people performing radical maneuvers, catching footballs, sitting on the board playing guitar… the whole lot. FunnyOrDie.com has since released a video featuring Christopher Lloyd (sort of) apologizing for the prank.

It was a cool hoax. The visual effects were well done, and it was nice to see Christopher Lloyd get into it. The best part is that many many people all over the web really fell for it. I searched "hoverboard" on Google, and I found an avalanche of websites reporting the hoax and how it had everyone upset about the technology's illegitimacy, to the point where I gave up my search for scientific information on the progress made thus far in actual research. I guess powerlaces will have to do for our Back To The Future wishlist. Of course, the true year of the hoverboard is 2015, so let's wait for next year and see if something doesn't actually work. Perhaps we'll get fourteen more Jaws movies until then. Flying cars? Nah, too retro-passé.

In the real world, the technology is not impossible, but it is far too impractical as of yet. If they made magnetic hoverboards and tracks for them, we could have them by next Christmas. The maneuvers displayed in the video would not be possible, however, because the angle of the magnets needs to be VERY precise or you'd just fall and injure yourself on the tracks. Yikes!

In case you're wondering, this is the closest thing we have.

If the asphalt itself had enough metal or equal polarity magnets as the hoverboard (very impractical), then you could more or less ride wherever these new grounds are found. The handling would be a whole other challenge, of course.

It's always good to dream, though. In fact, the dream lives on in the form of an actual hovercraft called the Airboard, designed by Kevin Inkster. It's a big lug of a machine, but at least it hovers via a high-powered propeller. That's the closest we have so far.

Oh, an open message to the world: don't fuck with our dreams again. I'm still mad about the Warcraft Adventures hoax a few years back. Have a nice day…unless you guys can think of a more cruel hoax? Comment!