"Chaos on the streets of Dublin" isn't the lyric to a new Smiths song—it's one of many headlines circulating after a listing popped up on an AI-generated website for a Halloween parade that never existed. The Independent reports that the promotion popped up on the My Spirit Halloween site, based out of Pakistan, advertising a two-hour event hosted by the Macnas arts group, which has held Halloween parades in Dublin since 2013 (not counting the pandemic years). However, the organization hadn't had a parade planned for 2024—meaning the hordes of people who staked out spots along the usual parade route were out of luck.
Defector reports that attendees started getting suspicious after an hour had passed and no parade materialized. "No [police] around, no official announcement, people waiting on the wrong side of the road," one observer noted. Local authorities soon broke the bad news officially. "Please be advised that contrary to information being circulated online, no Halloween parade is scheduled," the traffic and road safety arm of Ireland's police force tweeted. "All those gathered ... in expectation of such a parade are asked to disperse safely."
Defector notes that "the patient zero of this farce ... appears to be a combination of classic SEO bait tactics and newfangled AI slop content," with the website in question featuring some real Halloween events and some fake ones. Others tried to have a good time with the mix-up. "Our Halloween parade in full flow this evening," Dublin Airport joked on X, showing a photo of a completely empty terminal. Meanwhile, per the Independent, one observer recommends using the hoax for practical good, writing online, "The real lesson to be learned here is that a lot of people would clearly attend a Halloween parade and Dublin City Council should organize one next year." (More hoax stories.)
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