Have you or a loved one been gifted a pair of diamond cufflinks by Donald Trump only to find out they’re not worth the super glue they were made with? You’re not alone.
Yesterday, thousands of Bernie Sanders’ supporters began sharing what appeared to be a straightforward New York Times article—which you can read here—about Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren’s decision to endorse Sanders for President of the United States. Attributed to Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, both of whom are real Times reporters, the piece was written in convincing Times-ese, down to the headline (“Warren Endorses Sanders, Breaking With Colleagues”), lead sentence (“In a potentially decisive turn...”), and perfunctory quotes from the Sanders campaign and several disappointed Clinton surrogates. There were two major problems with the article, though: It wasn’t a real Times report, and Warren has not in fact endorsed Sanders.
After his debit card was declined at Applebee's, a man tried to pay for his solo Valentine's Day lunch with a $1 trillion bill.
A dumb and bad imitation van Gogh painting that was so fake it made people throw-up all over themselves and their nice clothes just to look at it has left the world breathless in awe over its poignant beauty as it has just been revealed, on second thought, to be a real van Gogh.
Today is April Fool's Day, a magical 24-hour spell during which companies spend lots of money to make stupid changes to their websites as a joke instead of as a business decision. In the spirit of public service we'd like to remind you: Don't trust anything you hear today. "Google Nose BETA," the search engine for scents? No. YouTube shutting down in preparation for finding the best video of all time? No. Twitter charging for vowels? No. Google Maps' new "treasure map" setting? Not real, and also not really even a joke. As usual, tech companies are the worst offenders in the publicity-in-exchange-for-saying-things-that-aren't-true game, but marketers have been gearing up for this for weeks, too. And TV: Good Morning America had a segment on a gorilla language this morning, and the Today Show had a Chris Brown "Breezy Flash Mob" complete with an interview. (Oh, no, wait: Today actually interviewed a violent and unrepentant abuser and hosted his insane fans outside its studio.) The prize for politics-related April Fool's is a tie between Sen. Ted Cruz who made a horrifically ugly April Fool's image macro for his Twitter, and the Yale Daily News, which straight-facedly announces that Hillary Clinton is joining the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. (Ah: that famous New Haven sense of humor.) I don't have a clear memory of anything that happened before, say, 2005, so I have to ask: Was April Fool's Day always this excruciating? Or is this all—the endless stream of bad non-jokes, the news coverage of the bad non-jokes, and the grumpy bloggers whining about the above—the internet's fault? April Fool's! I already know the answer: Human beings have always been embarrassing and unfunny, well before the internet. [Lifehacker | NYT | USAT]
Anyone who saw the movie Catfish or has spent longer than 20 minutes online knows that social media is not exactly a paragon of honesty. But it's still a little surprising to learn that there are 83 million fake accounts on Facebook.
Everyone has been passing around a fake cover of People magazine that has Twilight hunklet Taylor Lautner on the cover saying he's "Out and Proud." I hate to break it to you, but the fake cover that looks like a fake (a good fake, but a fake) is fake. Taylor Lautner is not "out and proud." I'm not going to say he's not gay (he isn't) but this cover is faker than JWOWW's boobs reading a James Frey book. Even Gossip Cop says so. Oh, Gossip Cop weighed in. Case closed!
You know how you spend every minute of your waking life desperately afraid that you will be found out as a laughable fraud and all your accomplishments discovered to be built on a foundation of luck and lies? Well! As it turns out, even babies can tell how unbelievably full of shit you are.
Yesterday, we published an item based on a former Newt Gingrich staffer's claim that Gingrich assembled his 1.3 million Twitter followers—a number that he's taken to bragging about—in part by buying fake Twitter followers. A lot of people did not think that was true! But today social networking search firm PeekYou announced that it had crunched the data and come to the conclusion that roughly 106,055 of Gingrich's million-plus followers are real people. The rest are fakes.
A school employee from New Jersey promised students that Lady Gaga would give the kids a talk about bullying via the internet. So she did what any reasonable person with absolutely no access to Lady Gaga would do after making a promise she could not keep: She hired a Lady Gaga impersonator!
On Sunday night's episode of her reality show Sarah Palin's Alaska, the former governor of Alaska shot, and killed, a caribou. So down-to-earth, or whatever! Except that experienced hunters don't seem to think Palin really knew what she was doing.
Did you hear about the secret talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban aimed at ending the War in Afghanistan? Well, it turns out the "senior commander" the Afghan government was meeting with... wasn't.
Earlier today, YouTube founder and CEO Chad Hurley accepted a Facebook friend request—from Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The email address was legit, so the account must've been too, right? Nope: "Schmidt" was actually TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington.
Casey Affleck, the director of I'm Still Here, the "documentary" about Joaquin Phoenix's descent into drug-fueled, hip-hop-wannabe madness, says it was all a "performance." Yes, everything—including the famous appearance on David Letterman—was faked for the movie.
On September 7, the African nation of Togo and the Middle Eastern kingdom of Bahrain played a friendly international soccer match. The only problem: Togo says it never sent its team to play the game.
Page Six reports folk hero Steven Slater attended a Playgirl honcho's bacchanalia this weekend. One problem: The guy in their picture isn't Steven Slater, who spent his weekend listening to Barry Manilow in Atlantic City. How to tell them apart.
That infamous earthquake-interrupted quarter-catching video may be fake. It's been removed from CNN's Youtube account.
Peter Orszag was not always the handsome, double-timing nerd Casanova we know, envy, and lust after. As recently as his appointment to Obama's cabinet, P.O. was sporting a hideous toupée—or was he?
The years from 2000 to 2009 were unified by fakeness — high-profile charlatans penetrated virtually every area of life (as Frank Rich also pointed out). From fake celebrities to fake journalists, here's a top ten of our favourite* frauds.
