The series was a hoax at the expense of its contestants, who were told they were being trained as cosmonauts at a Russian military base before undergoing a five-day trip into low Earth orbit. In reality, the entire series was filmed in Dore, and the contestants did not leave Earth.
I…am skeptical that it was actually believed.
Imagine you take 200 people who answered an ad seeking “thrill seekers” and to be on TV. Then you psychologically weed it down with questions in order to pick the 6 most gullible, groupthink, extroverts.
That’s how they got the people. Out of all the applicants. However many their were, they took the most gullible extroverted ones they could get.
It never would have been pulled off as a success with regular people.
Billions of people believe in some kind of magical sky fairy. Just saying.
Yea, me too. More like reality show wannabe’s that just went along with it for their 15 minutes.
It was the 2000s. Internet disinformation wasn’t really a major thing. I can imagine they believed it.