Ever hear of this guy Claude Vorilhon? He’s a crazy former race car driver wannabe who decided to start a religion centred around him because he thought he saw aliens. Apparently part of this religion requires gaining as much media attention as humanly possible, which saw increasingly ridiculous stunts culminating in the announcement that the group had cloned a human being in 2006. Of course it was complete bull, but the media bought it anyway. I’m hopeful that they’ve learned their lesson because we haven’t heard much from the Raëllians since.

Jeff Lizotte: Douchebag with stupid hair

Second on the list of ultimate attention-grabbers is Bombe.tv’s Jeff Lizotte, aka Jeff Lee. And his ethics aren’t much better. In August, he put up a hoax video about a Teletoon van being stolen. It turned out to have been a publicity stunt for Télétoon’s fall launch. Last month, he faked another video about using an iPhone to steal a Bixi.

Now, his latest pathetic stunt is offering to sell his Facebook profile photo (for a week) for $1,000. And the media have been eating it up: Patrick Lagacé, Dominic Arpin, Patrick Dion, Urbania, Salut Bonjour. They use the stunt to discuss an apparent larger issue of how much of our lives we’re willing to sell for advertising interests, but only Lagacé mentions the fact that Lizotte is a hoaxter.

This morning comes word that the campaign was successful, and some sucker marketing company will own his face for a week starting Monday.

Yeah, I realize that by writing this I’m giving this douchebag exactly what he wants: more attention. I wish there was some way to avoid that. And maybe I’m stating the obvious to some people. But I can’t ignore it when someone uses lies to manipulate the media (and social media) for selfish purposes and isn’t called on it. Jeff Lizotte is a serial liar. It’s time we stop taking what he says at face value.

So please, ignore him. Unfriend him on Facebook, stop following him on Twitter, remove Bombe.tv from your RSS reader. Send a message that you won’t be manipulated to service his ego. But most of all, don’t believe anything he says that sounds newsworthy, because it’s probably not true.

At least Raël’s desperate publicity stunts come from some delusional sense that it will eventually bring peace to the world.