Late yesterday whilst reading reddit, I spotted a link about some 6-year-old who “couldn’t have done all of this by himself”. I didn’t bother to click on it, but nevertheless it was the first vibrations of buzz surrounding what was to became a major news story. That evening, I checked reddit again to see the top story had (at the time) more than 1100 votes, and this is what it said:

The child of a creative garage scientist type had climbed into the base of an experimental helium balloon which took off and travelled south east at an altitude of 7,000 feet. The boy was contained in a tiny compartment made of plywood attached to the base of the balloon

Wowsers.  Before you knew it everyone was talking about Balloon Boy. It was a media frenzy, with the international press descending to child’s house and his family, friends and neighbours being interviewed on live television. Everyone was scrambling to ask “where is balloon boy?”

Within a matter of hours balloon boy was a trending topic on twitter, 4Chan were putting their ridiculous twist on things, and there were already mashups emerging surrounding the inspiring story… Where was balloon boy? Was he OK? Was he going to survive the impact?

After the balloon touched down and the boy was nowhere to be seen, it emerged that balloon boy was in fact, attic boy. He’d been hiding in the garage attic all along, so call off the huge rescue efforts and everyone can stop the panic. What a relief! He’s OK!

So the live interviews start to mount up, and whilst on CNN the child was being asked about his trip to the attic. “When you heard them shouting, why didn’t you come down?” and he replied “you guys said, that we did this for the show?”

So what’s the show? A filthy stinking PR stunt? Who is this family? First and foremost, the family in question are no strangers to the media spotlight and have featured on Wife Swap USA. Their show was geared around safe households vs unsafe households, no prizes for guessing which category Balloon Boy’s family fell under. So what was “the show” that balloon boy talked about?

His Father has a website, which investigates psychic phenomenon and other such crazyness, so maybe they were trying to promote that? If that’s the case, they’ve not thought the plan though, because their website has now crashed thanks to the thousands of hits it is no doubt getting.

I’m more of the mindset that this might involve Pixar, and some deal to create a media hype about some kid going up in a balloon. It’s the right timing so it’s not too obvious that this was a publicity stunt. Maybe balloon boy meant to say “you guys said, we did it for Pixar, and that movie…?” Was this a social media stunt for Pixar, or just a massively profitable coincidence for the blue skied animators?