Little April Rose

Recently a woman who identified herself only as "April's Mom" started blogging about how her unborn child had been diagnosed as terminally ill. And yet she had decided to go through with the pregnancy anyway. Her blog quickly became popular with the anti-abortion crowd. On Sunday "Little April Rose" was born, but died soon after.
But skeptics noticed something strange about the picture of Little April that April's Mom posted on her site. Little April looked exactly like a reborn doll called Avery manufactured by
Bountiful Baby.
Soon after, April's Mom was unmasked as Beccah Beushausen of Mokena, Illinois. Her entire blog had been fiction. The
Chicago Tribune has more details.
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Fri Jun 12, 2009 |
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Comments (7)
Category:
Birth/Babies,
Websites
The Fake Acai Berry Diet Girl
Status: Scam
Following up on
Accipiter's post in the forum about the Acai berry weight-loss scam -- one of the interesting (and sleazy) things about the scam is the proliferation of fake diet blogs promoting these Acai berries. The sites go by names such as kirstensweightloss.com, rachelsweightloss.com, patdietblog.com, etc. etc.
The sites have before and after pictures of the Acai berry dieters, but pictures of the same women appear on different sites... under different names. For instance, the woman below, depending on which site you visit, is named
Kirsten Hunt,
Ann Conrad,
Daniella Conrad,
Jenna Patterson, and a bunch of other names.
But according to the
Center for Science in the Public Interest, her real name is Julia. She's a german model who once posed for a
stock photo and has never eaten Acai berries. According to the photographer who took the photos, the "after" photos have been digitally manipulated to make her look skinnier.
The wafflesatnoon blog has a collection of all the
fake diet girls who are promoting Acai berries.
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Tue Mar 24, 2009 |
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Comments (15)
Category:
Food,
Websites,
Scams
Computer Tan
Status: hoax

Get a tan as you sit in front of your computer by logging onto
ComputerTan.com:
This technological breakthrough is enabled by converting the electrical impulse delivered to your pc into radiated factor-free UV rays.
It's Tan-Tastic!
The
Times Online reveals that the site is actually a hoax created by the UK skin cancer charity Skcin "to raise awareness of skin cancer in the UK." However, within only 24 hours, 30,000 people had registered their interest in getting a "computer tan" before the site was revealed to be a hoax.
This isn't the first online tanning salon we've seen. Back in
2004 I posted about
sunnysite.com.
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Thu Feb 05, 2009 |
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Comments (6)
Category:
Websites,
Technology
Megan Fox to play Wonder Woman?
Status: hoax

The site
wonder-who.com claims to reveal that Megan Fox will be starring in a new Wonder Woman movie. The site looks professionally made. Someone obviously put some effort into it. But according to
JoBlo.com, Warner Brothers has issued a denial, insisting that no such movie is planned.
So why did someone spend so much time creating the site? I have no idea. A really over-eager Megan Fox fan perhaps? Or maybe a studio was testing the response to the concept?
Links:
pfunn.com,
io9.com.
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Thu Nov 06, 2008 |
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Comments (7)
Category:
Celebrities,
Entertainment,
Websites
Weird Fragrances
Status: Suspicious

I stumbled across this site, weirdfragrances.com (I'm not linking directly to them, so I won't boost their google rank), that promises to send you a free sample of cologne. In return you simply provide them with your email and mailing address, and promise to later answer a few questions about the fragrance. You can choose from a variety of offbeat scents such as Grease Monkey, Burning Rubber, or Ash Tray.
Is it a legit offer? I would guess not.
First, it strikes me as odd that the site is registered anonymously through domains by proxy. Why would a legitimate company be trying to hide their identity?
Second, a quick google search reveals people
posting on forums about how they submitted their info but never received anything except spam. So it appears to be a spam trap.
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Tue Sep 23, 2008 |
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Comments (2)
Category:
Business/Finance,
Websites
Poe’s Law and TrueChristians.com
Status: Discussion of religious parody
Poe's Law, coined by Nathan Poe on the Christian Forums site, states:
in general, it is hard to tell fake fundamentalism from the real thing, since they both sound equally ridiculous. The law also works in reverse: real fundamentalism can also be indistinguishable from parody fundamentalism.
Cranky Media Guy recently submitted an example:
truechristian.com.
It contains passages such as:
So God put Adam to sleep and ripped out one of his ribs and behold, we find out that women originate from bones! So men come from dirt and women come from bone. Now that's real science in action and if you disagree you are going to Hell!
My b.s. meter says it's parody, but because of Poe's Law, I'm not totally certain.
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Tue Sep 16, 2008 |
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Comments (5)
Category:
Websites,
Religion
Should websites be given trustworthiness ratings?
Status: Debate
Sir Tim Berners-Lee is worried that there's too much disinformation floating around the web. He feels that there needs to be a way to rate sites according to how trustworthy they are.
From the BBC:
"On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable," he said. "A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging."
Sir Tim and colleagues at the World Wide Web consortium had looked at simple ways of branding websites - but concluded that a whole variety of different mechanisms was needed.
"I'm not a fan of giving a website a simple number like an IQ rating because like people they can vary in all kinds of different ways," he said. "So I'd be interested in different organisations labelling websites in different ways".
I don't think this proposal would improve the situation in any way. There already are trustworthy sites on the internet, and the web is actually pretty good at debunking rumors and misinformation. The problem is, the people who believe the misinformation are the same people who don't bother to check the trustworthy sites. (Thanks, Joe!)
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Mon Sep 15, 2008 |
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Comments (7)
Category:
Websites
Fosh Automotive
Status: Hoax
The website of
Fosh Automotive appeared a few weeks ago, promising that the company was soon going to unveil an unlimited mileage electric car that would sell for under $25,000. A lot of people were skeptical.
Fast forward to a few days ago, when Fosh unveiled something, but it wasn't an electric car. Instead, it was a bizarre anti-Obama, anti-abortion diatribe. Turns out the whole "electric car" thing was a bait-and-switch to lure eco-liberals to their site and then hit them with pictures of dead babies.
More evidence that conservatives basically have no clue how to pull off a good hoax. (via
Ecorazzi)
Posted By: Alex | Date:
Wed Aug 27, 2008 |
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Comments (4)
Category:
Websites,
Politics