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People have believed really stupid shit on the Internet for a really long time. For example, they really believed Bill Gates would send them a check for $1000 just for forwarding an email, or that Microsoft had acquired the Catholic Church. Some people really did try to charge their iPods using an onion and a bottle of Gatorade.

Most of these hoaxes were harmless; some, not so much. Literally billions of dollars have been siphoned from people who thought a member of the Nigerian royal family needed their help to abscond with $35 million in government funds. [1]

While hoaxes and urban legends pre-date the technological era (paging Sasquatch to a white courtesy telephone), the Internet is where they multiply like paramecia and find new hosts to inhabit. Now generative AI is poised to be the next great force multiplier of bullshit.

Thanks to AI, all those eager suckers, marks, rubes, chumps, pigeons, patsies, and dupes can point to actual visual and video proof of whatever Internet rumor they happened to be convinced of, never mind that the people in that viral photo are dead behind the eyes and have six fingers on each hand.

Which is why one of my new favorite sources of reliable information is NewsGuard. Since 2018, NewsGuard has been documenting fake news on the Internet; lately its focus has been on AI-generated fakes. Call it the Snopes for the ChatGPT era.

I subscribe to its Reality Check newsletter (and I recommend you do, too). Here are some of the funnier hoaxes it has reported on, stolen borrowed lovingly referenced here.

No, McDonald's is not serving Satanic Happy Meals

I haven't eaten at a Mickey D's in decades. But I would happily go back if the 'Baphomeal' were on the menu. I mean, the toy alone is enough.

NewsGuard tracked this down to a post on Xitter (of course) from a MAGA type calling himself "a marketing genius by day, meme lord by night." It then found its way to TikTok, where people got their boxers predictably bunched by it. By early April, the Baphomeal photo had been viewed nearly 700,000 times. 

No, Mattel is not selling a pregnant Ken doll

The immaculate conception has got nothing on this guy. Apparently Ken got a little too jiggy one night and ended up in a family way.  

Preggers Ken was created using Midjourney. It originated on an Instagram account called the.forbidden.toys, which also features AI-generated creations like KFC Barbie Chicken with Glitter Sauce, My Little Sweatshop, and Life Support Elmo. And it carried multiple tags identifying it as AI generated. Nevertheless, some people insisted that Knocked-up Ken was actually a scheme concocted by Mattel to sell more Barbie gear. 

My favorite bit is the Insta user who patiently explains that only women can get pregnant — skipping right over the fact that Ken is in fact a doll. 

No, OJ did not die from 'Turbo Cancer' as a result of taking the Covid vaccine

Every celebrity death is now an excuse for certain Very Serious People to crawl out from under the baseboards and proclaim loudly and semi-coherently that the Vaxx Is Responsible. Even celebrity murderers get the treatment.

Because when I have serious questions about medical issues, the first place I turn to is Erin Elizabeth Health Nut News and her 170K followers on Xitter. You will be shocked to learn that Erin Elizabeth is a) very blonde, b) lives in Florida, and c) is professionally and romantically associated with a man who has "made millions selling alternative health supplements online." Guess OJ should have taken some before he caught Turbo Cancer.

No, Volodymyr Zelensky did not just buy Downton Abbey

The Russian government has no shortage of Internet bullshit regarding Ukraine's president, and a lot of it has to do with real estate. 

As NewsGuard reports, Zelensky has been falsely accused of buying Highgrove House from the British royal family for a $25 million. This story was based on a YouTube video (now unavailable) narrated by an AI creation named Sam Murphy, and then reported as actual news by the (Russian-controlled) Sputnik News and the (fake news site) London Crier. 

Zelensky has also allegedly purchased a $20 million mansion in Vero Beach, Florida, and a villa that once belonged to Nazi chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels for $8 million. (Which sounds like a bit of an inside joke for Putin's own team of Internet propagandists.) He also supposedly acquired two luxury superyachts worth $75 million.

These stories appear to have reached their intended audience: the US Congress. Per NewsGuard:

Absurd as these claims appear when debunked, they have succeeded in influencing the debate over U.S. support for Ukraine. For example, Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance asked on a Steve Bannon podcast asked why the U.S. should fund Ukraine’s defense: “Why? So that one of Zelensky’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht?” 

I don't know if J.D. Vance literally believes that, or it's just more useful for him to pretend. But the people who listen to that podcast surely do. 

Welcome to Internet 2024 

We are living through a perfect shitstorm. Opportunists, scammers, and propagandists preying on the gullible and willfully ignorant, then using social media to distribute their bullshit at scale. And of course, with the elections six months away, this is about to get a whole lot worse. 

If Phineas Taylor Barnum had been born 20 years ago instead of 200, he'd be the biggest star on TikTok. 

Have you ever fallen for an Internet hoax? Post your confessions in the comments below or email me: Crankyolddan AT gmail DOT com.

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[1] The technical term for these kinds of 'advance fee' scams is Business Email Compromise, and per the FBI they account for more than $50 billion in losses between October 2013 and December 2022.