Next Media Animation’s take on the Manti Te’o thing is somehow the perfect way to describe what went down.
(Source: youtube.com)
And the twist … The Twitter account Manti Te’o’s reported fake girlfriend tweeted last night promising a full explanation, which means that a weird story just got weirder.
EDIT: Context to the “Reagan and Troy” bit:
The tweet refers to Arizona Cardinals fullback Reagan Mauia who told ESPN that he and Pittsburgh Steelers star Troy Polamalu actually met the girl. Mauia told ESPN that before Te’o’s relationship with Kekua, they became “good friends” and talked on and off.
“I can’t believe my ‘dead girlfriend’ was fake.” Deadspin’s doozy of a story on Notre Dame star Manti Te’o and the girlfriend that wasn’t has been read more than 2 million times this evening, which actually seems like a low number. Today we learned that the name Manti Te’o can now be spoken in the same sentence as Balloon Boy, and plot devices from terrible movies translate to real life sometimes.
See this story in your feed? Respond to it by linking to this one.
We’ve been discussing this in the office for a while, and just wanted to let everyone know that that Back To The Future clock screen floating around is fake.
For reference, these are the years visited in Back To The Future: 1885, 1955, 1985, 2015.
PSA for those unwilling to look back in time.
» Guess we won’t be able to trust his memoir: Dolin’s done an excellent job of undermining his entire book, especially the “nonfiction” part. If this guy can’t be kind to himself, what does that say about the rest of us? Next you’re gonna tell us that Forest Boy isn’t real … Oh God No.
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mbyhoff says: Hey, party-pooper, read this: https://twitter.com/#!/anarchival/status/127021226722983936
» SFB says: We, however, want to live in a world where we call PR scams what they are, and take outlets that propagate them to task. (EDIT: Which, to give them credit, they took to heart.) Is that too much to ask? — Ernie @ SFB
Slip up! Man orders size 14.5 slipper, gets size 1,450 instead
When a Chinese manufacturer missed a decimal point in an online order, one customer wound up with a monster of a slipper.All I want for Christmas.
This story is fake. It’s a PR stunt for the company that made the slippers, and the guy in the slippers is the company’s Webmaster. (EDIT: Today corrected their error. Good work, guys.)
40,000 people don’t realize this photograph is fake.
We got a special request from a reader to spread the word that this is a fake photo. Yes, it’s a hoax.
And a really old hoax, too. This is from the era where Fark was the most important aggregator on the internet.
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yeah, We were surprised, too. Canadian firm ApTiquant recently reported that Internet Explorer users had lower IQ scores than users of other browsers — a study which, by the way, got picked up by a ton of news outlets. Turns out their entire study was completely fabricated (and the firm didn’t even exist until recently). When the BBC asked Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University’s Statistical Laboratory for his opinion, he said “these figures are implausibly low — and an insult to IE users.” Some people are willing to do anything to get IE users to upgrade — and we don’t blame ‘em. source
I say shame on you!!! There are bloggers in Syria who are trying as hard as they can to report news and stories from the country. We have to deal with more difficulties than you can imagine. What you have done has harmed many, put us all in danger, and made us fearful about (pursuing) our…activism. Your apology is not accepted, since I have myself started to investigate Amina’s arrest. I could have put myself in a grave danger inquiring about a fictitious figure.GayMiddleEast Damascus blogger Sami Hamwi (who works under a pseudonym) • Expressing rage over the finding that the blogger behind ”A Gay Girl in Damascus” was actually a middle-aged dude from the States. Tom MacMaster says that he used the pseudonym to focus the attention not on the person writing the blog, but on the information itself. Good to see that one worked out for you. Now you’ve instilled doubt into every true story that’s out there. Nobody would’ve been upset had you admitted you were just a middle-aged white guy who felt the political situation in Syria was worth keeping an eye on. source (via • follow)
A preliminary search by law enforcement officers found evidence of what they believed was blood but no sign of anything else, leading them to suggest the call may have been a hoax.
A search warrant was obtained and a quick look around revealed nothing out of order. A state law enforcement source confirmed that DPS officials had obtained the warrant and entered the residence, after making a fruitless search of the property.
A foul stench emanating from the house was found to be coming from piles of rotting garbage. And the blood found at the residence was related to an earlier incident, the source told the Houston Chronicle.
“At the moment, there’s no validity to the report,” the source said. “There’s nothing that matches what the psychic said.”
You have to be careful with these kinds of things, obviously, but the evidence supports this being a hoax. It’s unfortunate that this poor family had to be pulled into this mess.
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