The government today kinda-sorta weighed in on the whole Manti Te'o hoax thing by issuing a set of State Department guidelines on how to avoid being the victim of "Internet Dating Scams."

Concerned that his poor grades might get him in trouble, an 11-year-old Spanish boy did what any kid his age would do when faced with the prospect of getting yelled at by mom and dad: He faked his own kidnapping.

Manti Te'o, the Notre Dame linebacker whose dead girlfriend was discovered by Deadspin to not have ever existed, is very visibly on the market right now. Maybe he's looking to pick up the pieces of his shattered personal life by falling into the arms of another fake girlfriend? If so (and who wouldn't be?), may I suggest that he consults namorofake.com.br, a Brazilian web site that allows you to buy a fake Facebook girlfriend.

When that video of a Golden Eagle snatching a baby from the ground (yes, that video of a Golden Eagle snatching a baby from the ground) hit the web last night, everyone immediately accepted its veracity.

Morgan Freeman may agree with the comments being attributed to him by thousands on Facebook and Twitter, but he didn't write them.

The story of Sharmeka Moffitt, the 20-year-old from Winnsboro, Louisiana, who was allegedly set on fire by three hood-wearing men in a racially motivated attack, took a bizarre turn this afternoon after police announced at a press conference that they now believe she injured herself.

David "Dave on Wheels" Rose was just your average, 24-year-old, deaf quadriplegic with cerebral palsy who used an eye-tracking device to write inspirational quotes on Twitter.

In a tweet purporting to be from the official account of Chris Brown, the R&B singer threatens "that damn granny bitch" Cher with "a beating" over her "opinion against Obama."

So maybe those tear-jerking pictures of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs looking withered and skeletal were not real after all? A skeptic over at Reddit posted this annotated image as "proof" that the pics of Jobs, who stepped down as CEO earlier this week, were manipulated to make him look worse off than he might appear in real life. [Update below]

Jennifer Wilbanks—who in 2005 ditched her wedding, blamed an imaginary Hispanic rapist for her cold feet, and unsuccessfully tried to sue her ex for talking about her—is unemployed and knee-deep in credit card debt.

You see a cool YouTube video of people running on water. It's called "liquid mountaineering," and you share it on Facebook and Twitter. Then you find out it was a viral marketing campaign. And you feel like a tool.

Three days ago, a widely-reported story emerged that Michael Lohan had posted to Twitter that Lindsay was HIV-positive. Michael said it was a hacker. Lindsay said it was her dad. Nobody realized that the hack itself was a fake.

Well, all the naysayers seem to have been right. Little Falcon Heene, who will now forever be immortalized as the balloon boy who sparked a media sensation, appeared on Larry King tonight and spilled the beans: it was a ruse!

Some little assholes used Digg and Wikipedia to spread the lie that teen actress Miley Cyrus had died in a car accident last night caused by "an unidentified black man"—and Yahoo News picked up the story. The hoax was short-lived, thank God. By this morning, it was hard to tell who, if anyone—aside from Yahoo—actually fell for it. One of the only mentions of it as anything but a scam seems to be this retarded Digg entry. So did anyone else actually buy it?

A new handful of YouTube videos supposedly show cell phones popping popcorn. The method: Surround kernels with a few cell phones and call the phones. When they ring, the kernels pop. The videos have gotten a couple million combined views, and they've seemingly convinced many commenters to fear phones, despite the several obvious signs that they're fake.

James Frey-the whining, lying-ass, horrible writer who was probably never seriously addicted to anything in his whole sad, pampered, no-talent life-may have duped The New York Times into giving his new novel a drooling rave. But he received much saner treatment from David L. Ulin at The Los Angeles Times. "'Bright Shiny Morning' is a terrible book. One of the worst I've ever read [...] Two and a half years after he was eviscerated by Oprah Winfrey for exaggerating many of the incidents in his now-discredited memoir 'A Million Little Pieces,' he's back with this book, which aims to be the big novel about Los Angeles, a panoramic look at the city that seeks to tell us who we are and how we live."

Hucksters are calling bookstores, pretending to be authors, and then hitting them up for money, reports the LA Times. For example, someone might impersonate an author that will be reading at the store in a few days, asking for cash to get his car out of the impound lot. Big-hearted bookstore employees have fallen for the scams a few times, but no more: "They draw you in, and later you just feel so foolish."

The Smoking Gun says that the LA Times' big investigative scoop last week implicating Bad Boy records chief Sean "Puffy" Combs in the 1994 shooting and robbery of rival rapper Tupac Shakur was based on fabricated evidence. The site says that James Sabatino (pictured)—an incarcerated con man who appeared as a player in the shooting in the LAT story—is actually a fabulist who forged the FBI reports that the paper relied on to build its investigation.

90 Day Jane, the blogger who promised to commit suicide in 90 days, won't. She made the site as an art project, figuring only some friends would see it because people usually aren't drawn to dramatic stories on the Internet. While Jane hasn't revealed her true identity, Radar Magazine thinks they found her at a blog named Void, running the photo and caption shown here. Anyway, after Jane outed herself on the blog, she shut the whole thing down. We saved the confessional post below, in which Jane thanks her readers for being "real and heartfelt" and gives props to all of you who asked her to flash some tit.

Keach Hagey, the short-lived former Village Voice press columnist, is suggesting over on her blog at CBS News that yesterday's video of an average white man being assaulted by a group of black teenage girls on the A train could be a hoax. Why? Because the girl who filmed it was an aspiring filmmaker who claimed, at first, she didn't know the assailants but, right after being interviewed by The Smoking Gun, deleted her YouTube page! Oh, wait. that doesn't mean anything! In related news, Katie Couric's viewership on CBS is down a million viewers over a year ago.