by Kim Filchak, Senior Reporter

Previously in Rampant Speculation I took a journey down the rabbit hole to look at the false flag Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice script rumors just to see if there was any truth to the matter. The answer I came to was, Ummm…. Maybe? (You gotta love the high standards set for investigative journalism over here at Ramp Spec.) Well, it turns out that this maze of rumors is the mother-load of crazy and it just keeps on giving. The internet based conspiracy of the possibly fake script for Batman v Superman has been dubbed “#scriptgate” by Twitter and it just got a new character in its ongoing saga. In the week or so that has followed since my initial breakdown of the who, what, and where of it all there have some some wonderfully wanky developments.

Originally posted on MovieWeb was an email that purported to out the script as a fake and laid the blame at the feet of the Warner Bros marketing machine and FanBoy Prime Kevin Smith (Clerks, Dogma, Degrassi: The Next Generation) doing some counter intelligence to keep fans in the dark about the film. While Warner Bros is still not commenting on the whole sordid affair Smith took to the twitter to issue a denial that it was him who done did the fans and gossip rags so terribly wrong.

“No, I didn’t write a fake Batman v Superman script. But I HAVE kept busy regardless… http://silentbobspeaks.com/?p=1087 Thanks for saying #WalrusYes !”

Smith posted on his blog to elaborate on the reasons why this was totally not him, which was reported by the dudes over at The Bible of Zach Snyder.

…However, none of those has been a fake BATS v SUPES script. C’mon, kids… No major studio would let a guy like me near their franchises – even if it was for a dummy script meant solely to fool the news sites. (Don’t know if it’s true or not, but this Twitter user is claiming credit for a fugazi script that’s currently being reviewed online.)

No, anything I’ve said about “Milo and Sage” was based on an image Zack showed me while hosting a MAN OF STEEL online event at Yahoo many months back. The little I know of the flick beyond that I learned from some cats involved (though never BatFleck himself; as I’ve said a few times now on the Babble-On podcast, beyond email, I haven’t spoken to Ben in years). Fun story, though.

But that was not all they had to report, no this only the beginning of the crazy. A twitter user going by the handle @SonOfArrogance confessed to writing the fake script and in an interview with Bible of Zach Snyder he elaborated on why he committed such a terrible act against fandom. What follows is the interview equivalent of @SonOfArrogance saying “I did it 38 minutes ago.”

“I am a regular commentator on IGN and when the movie was announced there was this uproar of negativity.
People were pissed about the casting, the director, the writer etc etc. And it was completely irrational. There was no sense to it. Just a bunch of people angry over what was ultimately nothing. There is no basis for anger in my opinion unless there is something tangible. Which there wasn’t just rumors. Coming from sites that couldn’t possibly know anything that early in the game.
It was a sort of internet tribalism that intrigued me.
So I decided to exploit that.”

Among the rumors flying around the web about Batman v Superman @SonOfArrogance claims that the following are based on his script; the four new villains (Victor Zsaza, David Cain, Morgan Edge, & Amanda Waller), Doomsday making an appearance and the rumor that stretched my own suspension of disbelief to the point of disintegration, Lex Luthor as a tattooed former street thug who had reformed and made good.

I would add that BadAssDigest mentioned that in the potentially fake script they saw the film opens with a scene involving Aquaman, so until someone somewhere officially confirms it we may have to add Jason Momoa appearing in Batman v Superman as Aquaman to the pile of disappointment as well.

The entire interview with @SonOfArrogance is fascinating and can be read over at The Bible of Zach Snyder. As well as monologue-ing about his evil plans from what I can only assume is an lair deep within the reaches of a hollowed out volcano @SonOfArrogance presented his evidence that this confession is itself not a double, double, double cross (I got that right, right? Three doubles and a cross? At this point I am so far down the rumor rabbit hole time, space, and linear numerical sequencing have lost all meaning). He did this with screen caps of twitter conversations, photos, and a pretty tight narrative, so clearly he has some evidence to back up his claim. He also claims to be the source of the email received by MoiveWeb that outed the script as being a possible fake in the first place.

So like I said, give the interview over at The Bible of Zach Snyder a read and see what you think of the sinister mastermind’s claim to mass dissemination of fake internet rumors and global annihilation (I may have made that second one up).

The interview not only goes on about the how of @SonOfArrogance’s massive con job but also the why, which is what I really wanted to know. At least I can now rest well at night knowing that if this is the guy who did it than it was not entirely motivated by spite and the uncontrollable impulse troll people that seems to be the default setting on just about everyone these days. It turns out this is @SonOfArrogance’s attempt to call out all of the massive fan created negative flame wars and bulling so often sparked by news related to properties with high levels of geek based fandom, as well as the rumor machine blogosphere that feeds it.

To the fans I’d like to show them that the majority of what they are arguing about online isn’t real. So when they call each other ‘fags’ or ‘bitches’ they should realize that they are championing nothing but attractive lies and judging things without any real evidence.
To the bloggers I say this: don’t exploit the ignorance of fanboys for clicks and have flame war baiting headlines that just seem to encourage that behavior. If [you’re] in the business of potentially damaging a filmmakers process before they even have the chance to present the finished product realize that there are people who will exploit you for that.

There you have it. Intellectual curiosity, access to the rumor mill system along with a baseline understanding of how it works, a sense of self-righteousness, and the ethics of Machiavelli all combined to give us the internet hoax that ends all internet hoaxes, that is until someone tops this one. Unless, of course, this is the hoax? What is even REAL anymore man!!!

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