Earlier this week, Vocativ interviewed an eyewitness who said a viral video that has raised over $130,000 in questionably held donations was staged. Now a man who claims he's related to the video's homeless star has come forward, saying "it's all a scam" and his seemingly penniless brother is actually due to inherit $150,000 from their parents' estate.
Last week, a heart-warming social experiment video hit the web, showing a "secretly filmed" homeless man using an unexpected gift of $100 to buy food for others. Since then, the almost too-perfect clip has been featured everywhere from the L.A. Times to Upworthy and generated over $130,000 on a donation page managed by the video's uploader, YouTube personality Josh Paler Lin.
You may have a seen a story going around Facebook that promises you'll be able to float in the air on January 4th as a result of a planetary alignment that will "decrease gravity" for 5 minutes. Unfortunately, it is total bullshit.
New York magazine issued a succinct and straightforward apology Tuesday morning for publishing an article that implied Mohammed Islam, a senior at Stuyvesant High School, made $72 million trading stocks. "We were duped," the magazine's editors said in a statement. "Our fact-checking process was obviously inadequate; we take full responsibility and we should have known better. New York apologizes to our readers."
The New York Magazine feature on a high school kid who made $72 million trading stocks turned out to be complete bullshit. Now, in an interview with The New York Observer, the featured kid is pointing fingers at the author, who's defending the piece, arguing people should have realized it was a hoax all along.
In a popular viral video from last week, men appeared to aggressively try to take advantage of a "drunk" woman on Hollywood Boulevard. Although it was presented as a real "social experiment," the men in the video were paid actors who thought they were doing a comedy skit. And now the model who played the fake drunk girl says she was tricked the same way.
A video showing sketchy men trying to take advantage of a woman who was acting drunk in public made the rounds last week, but the directors of the "prank" video neglected to mention that the "creepy" men were paid actors. Two of the men told Inside Edition they're upset at being made to look like predators.
A mother of six is under investigation by Australian police after she apparently fooled dozens of generous strangers on Facebook, and even her boyfriend, into believing she had cancer and needed expensive medical treatments. The Daily Telegraph broke the story of her unraveling hoax, which reportedly netted her thousands of dollars, this week.
The ostensible story behind this video is that a man heard his wife coming home in the middle of the night and recorded her "making grilled cheeses" by melting string cheese over a plateful of goldfish crackers while swigging wine and insisting she's not drunk.
This video of songwriter Rob Cantor performing an original song in an impressive range of celebrity voices—everyone from Bono to Cher to Jeff Goldblum—has been watched 7 million times in a week, with commenters praising Cantor's spot-on impressions. Which makes sense, because they were actually done by a team of 11 professionals.
A couple of months ago, it became a Thing to yell "fuck her right in the pussy" while being interviewed on a live newscast. The problem (besides the obvious) was that no one had actually done it. Every one of the several viral videos featuring the phrase had been faked by a jokester named John Cain.
KFC donated $30,000 to the family of three-year-old Victoria Wilcher after they claimed an employee at a store in Jackson, Miss. asked them to leave because Victoria's scars—leftover from an attack by her grandfather's pit bulls—were scaring customers. But according to a new report in the Laurel Leader-Call, the whole thing was a hoax and never happened.
There is an image going around Twitter today that purports to be some new Kanye West-related... something. It features Michelangelo's David under the phrase "Kanye West's New Testament." West is reportedly working on his new album, but a source in Kanye's camp has told Gawker what seems obvious: this thing is fake.
A Cincinnati man, his face disguised by beard, sunglasses, and hoodie, has now wandered into at least two different local newscasts, grabbing the mic and screaming "fuck her right in the pussy."
The internet was weird this week. Mostly in a good way. But also in a bullshitty way.
Hey, look. The internet still has lies in it.
