6 BS Stories That Went Viral: Siri's Not a Murder Accomplice

6 A Dumb Criminal Did Not Ask Siri How to Hide a Body

Everyone loves a good dumb criminal story almost as much as they love a dumb "Florida man" story -- so when a man in Florida on trial for murder was outed for asking Siri how to hide a body, the news exploded like a John Woo film starring two Large Hadron Colliders. Sites like Business Insider, BuzzFeed, Mediaite, Yahoo, the Independent, IB Times, Huff Post, and Fox all got in on the carnage:

All the reports were accompanied by this incriminating image:

That might look vaguely familiar to you, but that doesn't mean you're secretly a serial killer: It just means you remember back in 2011 when everyone was sharing joke Siri replies like that one, which were put in as Easter eggs. According to actual reports from the trial, the image was found in the defendant's Facebook cache, which means that he probably just scrolled past it at some point, not that he made the query himself -- which would have been a little tricky anyway, since his phone doesn't have Siri.

Oh, also relevant: The victim wasn't even his roommate.

Apparently, we have the amateurish reporting of a small local Florida news site to thank for getting this sordid tale all wrong, followed by the amateurish reporting of the rest of the Internet for disseminating that version of the story instead of the truth, which was plainly available in CBS' report the whole time.

5 That Actress' Selfie With Her Surgically Removed Ribs Was a Blatant Hoax

Rib removal is a fabled summer activity where an actress/goth rock star has a torso bar removed in order to achieve a slimmer figure/self-dick-sucking glory. Basically the American dream, but as recent headlines have shown, it's not actually a regionally exclusive phenomenon:

According to USA Today, Fox News, Metro, and more, Mexican actress/singer/mother of Batman's child Thalia "admitted ... on a Philippine entertainment news program" that the long-running rumors that she had two ribs removed to look thinner were true, then confirmed it beyond any shadow of a doubt by posting the above images on Instagram. However, at the same time, she seemed to be dropping subtle clues that perhaps she wasn't being completely serious, like using the hashtag #myth, posting pictures of herself eating cooked ribs, or, you know, this:

Also, the talk show where she "admitted" all of this? Here's the clip. Unless she had a separate procedure done to become a bald Filipino man, she's not there. So, basically, she saw some morons talking about her ribs on TV and posted the photos to troll them ... along with the rest of the media, inadvertently.

4 No, There Isn't Going to Be a Real-Life "Purge"

The Purge is the ultimate dream boner for Guy Fawkes-mask-wearing 13-year-olds posting anarchist manifestos on a social media conglomerate, a story centered on an America where all crime is legal for one day -- a story that, according to IB Times, Inquisitr, Epoch Times, and Houston Chronicle, just might become true.

EVERYBODY HIT THE DECK! THE REVOLUTION IS CO- Wait, this was supposed to happen last week? Huh.

You've probably guessed that it's constitutionally impossible for any city or state to allow a "get out of jail free" day, but what about masses of teenagers getting organized to go out and crime the shit out of everything? That could happen, right? After all, the original reports said this originated from "a threat posted on social media" -- which translates to a little kid's Facebook post. The original hoax only spawned a series of copycat posts after the news kept shouting it to the heavens, because during a time of civil unrest and police protest, clearly the most responsible thing the media can do is give the most doomsaying jabber-voice a fucking megaphone.

3 Teens Lighting Themselves on Fire Isn't a New Craze

One teen doing something dumb is hardly newsworthy. Two teens, though? Hell, that's a full-blown social phenomenon right there. For example, take a look at Huffington Post's coverage of the "trend" that teenagers are now lighting themselves on fire, because rollerblading just isn't extreme enough anymore.

The article starts by telling us that the video they're reporting isn't the only instance of this new "fire challenge" before seemingly running through other occasions this has popped up in the news. Only through the investigative power of clicking one can you discover that all those links just lead back to different sites covering the same single story of one kid lighting his dumbass chest on fire ... making the toll for this trend a two.

Follow their link to a New York Daily News story and you'll find both of those, plus a third (from a British stunt group), as well as a fourth video ... that's a year old. So now the cool new trend is up to three recent videos and one from before the trend even started, which is of course more than enough for Time and Business Insider to start running headlines like this:

Compound that with the hoax death headlines rolling in and it's safe to say there's a hot new trend out there about reporters just not giving a shit anymore.

2 That "Mambo No. 5" Coke Photo Is So Clearly Fake

Every now and then a viral photo comes along that people want to be true so badly that the part in their brain that remembers Photoshop exists shuts off. See how your brain fares with this latest sensation:

If that means nothing to you, congratulations on avoiding 1999 entirely -- those are the lyrics to Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." Yes, not only has the machine miraculously lined up the bottles to mimic the names listed in the song, but it magically made the words uncurved on the labels. This got passed along by BuzzFeed, Metro, Bustle, Elite Daily, and Digital Spy ...

... before some journalistic savant (random guy on Twitter) went ahead and did the unthinkable by actually looking up if those names exist on Share a Coke bottles, to discover that they absolutely do not.

Which sure seems unsurprising when you consider that the photo came from a stranger's Reddit post, something that would prompt any intelligent news blogger to take a couple clicks out of their day to do the really easy search themselves. Then again, we are talking about the same people who think funny soda shelving is newsworthy.

1 There's No War Against Pool Poopers in Egypt's Hotels

All right, everyone take a knee, because this is going to take a moment. Cracked has produced at least a solid novella's worth of reading material on the fact that the Daily Mail is a tabloid site that literally just makes up stories. We won't even link you our articles about it, because we think that would be like sourcing the fact that poop smells. And with that, a masterful segue ...

Despite being sensational swill 90 percent of the time, Death And Taxes, Metro, Elite Daily, News.com.au, and NY Daily News have decided to trust the Daily Mail by passing on the story of the brave hotel that decided to take a stand against a pool pooping epidemic by fining over $2,000 to anyone who participates in this new craze. The evidence? A photo of a memo that anyone could have printed, which means very little, and the Daily Mail's word, which means less than nothing. This tourism site carried out an independent investigation (translation: Googled for five minutes) and concluded that there's no wet turd conspiracy.

And while that's business as usual at this point, our real disappointment came from Jezebel also posting the story ... only for this to happen in their comment section:

If you're confused, the second post is from the writer of the Jezebel article proudly acknowledging the fact that they are reporting a most likely fake story that we'll have to debunk later -- and while we're always happy to hear from a dedicated reader, that's basically the opposite of journalism right there. So, going with the poop theme ... if a child poops on a rug for attention, probably the best thing to do is start ignoring the child so he or she will stop. Because apparently basic human shame isn't going to work.

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