The First Amish Newsletter is a fake website with this introduction:

Throughout the site are many nice little touches - I particularly like the buggy safety page with its 'buggy test'.

I also appreciated the disclaimer.
(Thanks, Nathan.)

The Animus Cult has been spreading posters and sigils around Adelaide, South Australia, recently. These posters proclaim ‘Animus is coming’, and some also contain a link to the website.

They talk about Animus: So who is Animus? Why he is here and what is his purpose? His purpose is very simple. The Wicked are the disease. Animus is the cure. So now I must show you the truth. The strength of Animus lies in the Will of Man. Animus is here because the will of man is to rid itself of the wicked."

They have a few pictures of 'Animus in action' on the website, all of which are incredibly blurry shots of a figure in shadow, and a video which is much the same.
There's an option of 'joining the cult', which I tried, but there's been not even one email as yet, so I'm unsure of the purpose of it.

Needless to say, I'm unconvinced of the existence of a supernatural figure who's coming to rid Adelaide of evil-doers.

The site features a countdown to Friday, October 13th which, according to someone on this site, is when the independent film 'Animus Cometh' (filmed in Adelaide) is released.
Seems plausible to me.

(Thanks, Joshua.)

Giant Gnome
Maria Reidelbach's Gnome Chomsky is aiming for a Guinness record for tallest gnome, at a whopping 13 feet, 6 inches tall.

Woman Finds Husband's Secret - Female Hormones
Catherine Everett was surprised when she walked into the bathroom, only to find her husband admiring his new breasts.

Babytoupee.com
Coming soon, allegedly...

Teenager Sends his Ex-company 5 Million Hoax Emails
David Lennon was annoyed when he was fired from his job. So he sent 5 million hoax emails over the course of a week, quoting The Ring. He was given a two-month curfew order and fitted with an electronic tag.

The Butter Trough, located in Atlanta, Georgia, is a great concept for a restaurant. First of all, the menu is simple. They only serve bread, butter, and sweet tea. But best of all, it's all free! It's the world's first advertiser-supported restaurant: Is this place real? I don't think so. Clues that it's fake include the google ads on the website (though this would make sense given that the restaurant is advertiser supported), and the obligatory CafePress t-shirts they're selling. But the biggest clue is the address: 6346 Lynch Avenue, Atlanta GA. There doesn't appear to be such a place. At least, nothing comes up on Google Maps when I type in that address.

I'm guessing that the Butter Trough site was created by Joseph Donaldson, because a) Joseph Donaldson's homepage is hosted on the same server as The Butter Trough site and b) he links to the Butter Trough. A few other sites (all of which link to the Butter Trough as well) hosted on that server include: Circus of the Damned, and the Just Ducky Guild. (Thanks to Doug Nelson for the link)

The latest mystery to capture the short attention span of the internet is ThatGirlEmily. It's a blog, supposedly written by "Emily" who during the past two weeks has discovered that her husband "Steven" is cheating on her. Coincidentally she started her blog just before all these interesting things in her life began occuring. Yesterday she decided to get even with Steven by placing a large billboard near where he works with this message on it: Emily's blog and billboard, as almost everyone who has posted about it agrees, just screams viral marketing. AtleastIhavechicken.com has summarized some of the reasons why it's probably a viral marketing campaign:
1) Emily has gone to some effort to conceal her identity;
2) Her blog is too well written (grammatically speaking) and the story unfolds a little too neatly to be real;
3) Since she started her blog, someone using the username ThatGirlEmily has been comment spamming numerous message boards. See here, and here, and here.
4) In addition to the billboard in New York (which seems to be real), an identical billboard has also been spotted in LA. The dual billboards, in my opinion, is the real clincher, because why would Emily, if she were real, pay for billboards in different cities?

I don't know who's the mastermind behind ThatGirlEmily, but here are the leading theories:

1) It's a viral created by an outdoor billboard company, to demonstrate the effectiveness of billboard advertising. (kind of like the Outhouse Springs campaign.)
2) Or it's a viral for a Court TV show. Possibly Parco P.I. (this is Gawker's favorite theory.)

Emily vows 14 days of vengeance. So I'm sure we'll eventually know the real story behind this.

Unflinching Triumph, a recently released movie, explores the little-known subculture of Professional Staredown contests (aka Staring Contests). You can view the movie in its entirety online (free and legal!), or view the trailer at YouTube.

If you believe the movie, there really is such a thing as professional staredown contests. This illusion is strengthened by the website of the National Association of Staredown Professionals (NASP) and the website of Staredown Champion Tony Patterson. However, I'm pretty sure that the movie is a mockumentary, and that the NASP and Tony Patterson sites are part of the joke.

But I started wondering if perhaps the movie was based on a germ of truth. Is there some kind of subculture of staring enthusiasts? After all if cup stacking or chess boxing can be sports, why not staring? So I checked on Lexis Nexis to see if there was any mention of Staring as a professional sport in any paper for the past five years. But there doesn't seem to be. Wikipedia doesn't make note of any such thing either, though it does mention that some people like to challenge their pets to staring contests.

I've received a few emails asking me for info about noscruf.org. It appears, on the surface, to be a site created by the NO SCRUF organization, which stands for "National Organization of Social Crusaders Repulsed by Unshaven Faces." It's supposedly a growing coalition of women who have vowed not to shave until men start shaving. Their website, which features lots of photos of hirsute models (obviously photoshopped, or using glue-on hair), proclaims: "Let's end the trend of prickly, scratchy, stubbly faces. We're not going to shave until men do." Last week a No Scruf protest rally was also held in New York's Herald Square featuring TV stars Kelly Monaco and Brooke Burke.

It's pretty easy to figure out that this isn't a real grassroots movement of stubble-hating women. It's a viral marketing campaign dreamed up by Gillette. I figured this out by doing a quick search for domain name info about noscruf.org. Turns out the site's name was registered by Procter & Gamble and the site itself is hosted on servers owned by Gillette. They didn't even try to hide this information.

As for No Scruf's message, I hate shaving, so despite Gillette's efforts to convince me otherwise, I'm keeping my stubble.

Here's another site to add to my ongoing list of unfortunate URLs — OMFG.com. The site explains that OMFG stands for 'Official Meeting Facilities Guide.' They claim to be "the industry’s leading meeting planning print directory for the most active meeting professionals." They seem to have no clue that OMFG is more commonly used as an acronym for a different phrase ('Oh My F***ing God'). But having this URL probably generates a fair amount of traffic for them, so maybe it was an intentional choice. Plus, it's an easy URL to remember. (Thanks to Kathy for the link.)

Yahoo News! reports on a hoax website, http://www.instoresnow.nl, created by a Dutch design student, Raoul Balai. It pretends to be an ad agency that offers advertising space on the bodies of prostitutes. It also offers to place ads on zoo animals. Big Gary points out that this is basically a variation on the old 'advertise on my forehead... or other body part' stunt. (Imagine brothel patrons or zoo goers having to wear body-ad blockers.) Yahoo News! reports: I've been trying to check out Balai's site, but it won't load. The increased traffic from being mentioned on Yahoo News! must be the reason.

A couple of people have asked me if I know anything about eon8.com, a mysterious website that features a clock counting down to July 1 (tomorrow). Unfortunately I don't know anything about it. Though I guess we'll all find out what it is tomorrow, unless we just get another cryptic clue once the clock reaches 0.

According to Wikipedia, the leading theories are that it's a) an alternate reality game, b) some kind of distribution system for computer viruses (unlikely, I think), or c) a viral marketing scheme (perhaps a viral created by EON Productions to promote their next film, Casino Royale).

I can't think of anything else 'eon 8' would refer to. The poet WB Yeats developed an elaborate system of occult theory which held that history progresses through various spiritual eons each of which has their own special character. But I'm highly doubtful that the eon8 website is a reference to Yeatsian theosophy.

The domain registration info is also a dead end. It was registered via Domains by Proxy back in December 2005.

My hunch is that it probably will turn out to be option c: a viral marketing scheme.

Update: The eon8 site is now loading very slowly, if at all.

Update 2: You can check out an investigation of eon8 at http://eon8theinvestigation.ytmnd.com/.

Update 3: With the countdown completed, the secret behind eon8 has been revealed. It was a social experiment created by a 23-year-old web designer named Mike from Florida. He wanted to find out "the reactions of the internet public to lack of information." He discovered that a lot of people thought it might be a terrorist site (because of the ominous map it displayed with red dots over major population centers). Others, as I noted above, speculated it might be some kind of viral marketing scheme. Mike says that he's disappointed so many people assumed the site had evil intentions, but that reaction doesn't seem very illogical to me. After all, if you encounter someone that is obviously hiding something, why would you assume their intentions are benign? Also, looking at it from the perspective of social psychology, the site violated the norm of openness that exists on the internet. This would explain why it generated a hostile reaction from some. Groups always try to punish those who violate their norms.

OperationEMU.com offers up "Statements, theories and artifacts related to the alleged 1974 NASA experiment during which an entire Hollywood film crew, contracted by the government, disappeared in a remote section of Nevada." This seems to be the jist of what the site alleges happened: The Hollywood film crew was there to help stage a training exercise for the NASA-led Operation EMU (which stands for Operation Experimental Mitigated Universe). Operation EMU itself was some kind of NASA project to prepare for alien contact. And somehow a group of Meemaw Indians performing a solstice ritual were involved in this.

Sound a little bizarre? I think that's the intention. The site was created by B. Brandon Barker to promote his novel, for which he's shopping for a publisher. (The article about him in the Baltimore Sun should definitely help his chances with that.) Barker says that he designed his novel to be a parody of "pretentious sci-fi films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and the cult of alien-life true believers" (Hey, I like 2001: A Space Odyssey!). The strange thing is that although Barker's plot is pure fiction, some people now believe elements of it to be real. At least, according to the Baltimore Sun: Shades of Alternative Three there. If you create a hoax about a government cover-up, some people will inevitably insist that revealing it as a hoax is part of the cover-up.

Meet Genpets, the cute, cuddly (kind of ugly) pets of the future, that come shrinkwrapped in plastic: It should be pretty obvious that Genpets aren't real, though the Genpets site is well designed. The Genpets site is the creation of artist Adam Brandejs. Apparently he's actually been hanging these things in store windows. And the real-life versions of them look like they're alive, thanks to some robotics and circuitry. He writes: (Thanks to Torbjørn Solstad for the link)