5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)

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5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)

Entertainment sites are facing a serious problem: There's a limited number of things that happen every day, but their readers will click on an infinite amount of articles, as long as someone or something vaguely famous is involved. The solution? Follow the grand Internet tradition of making shit up. Print a headline saying "Bill Murray killed and ate Miley Cyrus!" and watch as it gets 100,000 shares before either of their publicists can deny it.

Now, all of us have fallen for stories like these in the past, but there are some particularly egregious types of bullshit articles that should really be setting off our hogwash alarms by now. Starting with ...

Stop Saying The Simpsons Predicted Stuff

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
20th Television

The Internet is 80 percent porn, 70 percent fanfic on Tumblr, and 90 percent inaccurate statistics. Whatever's left is made out of bullshit listicles about how some old Simpsons episode predicted today's events. Apparently, they foresaw Donald Trump: Angry Half-Chewed Orange Starburst For President 15 years before it happened:

'The Simpsons' predicted President Trump way back in 2000
washingtonpost.com

The Simpsons Predicted Trump's Disastrous Presidency 15 Years Ago by Matt wistein 11-10 am July 30th 2015 71 MIDee
mediaite.com

The Simpsons Predicted 15 Years Ago That a Trump Administration Would End in Disaster 8y losh Voorbees f 12.11 235 21
slate.com

Trump Presidency? Lisa Simpson Declared It Bankrupt- In 2000
via deadline.com

They also predicted that Lisa would be an adult by 2010, so ...

But before you go proclaiming Matt Groening "King of the Psychics," consider this: That episode aired in 2000. Guess what lying, hypocritical moron announced he'd be running for President in 2000? No no, the other one. Yes, Trump said he'd run for President under the Reform Party in 2000 (and had been talking about it since 1987), meaning The Simpsons predicted precisely squat. And as far as them "predicting" that President Trump would destroy the country ... duhhhh. That's like predicting grass will be green, or that a diaper will be loaded with shit.

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)

Can anthropomorphic loaded diapers even legally run for president?

And we do this all. The. Fucking. Time. Unless some fat yellow dude destroys an entire city by pressing the wrong button at the power plant, it's no big deal if real life imitates The Simpsons. It's a topical show with damn near 600 episodes under its quarter-century-old belt. Of course there's going to be overlap with reality -- which hasn't stopped sites like BuzzFeed from marveling over the matter. Let's review their mind-blowing discoveries:

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
via Buzzfeed

So the Simpsons made an irradiated food joke, and now Japan's got irradiated fruit? That's not a new idea. If anything, the vegetation around Chernobyl predicted The Simpsons. Oh, and the deformed Japanese veggies were bullshit anyway. Off to a good start, BuzzFeed!

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
via Buzzfeed

OK. So. In 2004, a bunch of Ohio voting machines glitched and accidentally gave George W. Bush 4,000 extra votes. In 2008, the Simpsons satirized that incident. In 2012, it happened again for real. And that's supposed to be a score for Homer and friends how? Just because your memory was crippled by all those '90s nostalgia GIF parades doesn't mean that the past suddenly didn't happen, BuzzFeed.

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
via Buzzfeed

This is probably the closest one: They successfully predicted that somebody who works with wild animals would eventually get attacked by one. Impressive. What's next, claiming that The Simpsons predicted baseball players playing softball?

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
via Buzzfeed

DICK TRACY, YOU ASSHOLES! THE JETSONS! EVEN THE FUCKING FLINTSTONES! Somebody got paid for this list! You know what, we're moving on before this gives us an aneurysm.

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
via Buzzfeed

Arrrrghhh! Too late!

People Need To Chill About Idris Elba Playing James Bond

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
Kevin Winter/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Eventually, Daniel Craig will stop being James Bond. And despite the fact that he's a totally outdated character, tradition dictates that we'll need a new one. One of the top names being bandied about is Idris Elba, who deviates from the Bond norm in one glaringly obvious way ...

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images


"The world isn't ready for a Bond with facial hair. Sorry."

OK, there's also the race thing, an issue which Bond novelist Anthony Horowitz dealt with in the worst possible way. In an interview with The Daily Mail, he claimed that Elba would suck as Bond because he's "too street." The Internet responded by figuratively painting Horowitz's naked body gold and leaving him to asphyxiate.

Idris Elba Too Street to Play James Bond, 007 Author Says
via hollywoodreporter.com

ldris Elba 'tOO street' to play James Bond, writer says
via cnn.com

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
via usatoday.com

James Bond author calls ldris Elba too street' to play Bond, apologizes
via cbsnews.com

Most were only scandalized to find out there are still Bond books, though (or books in general).

First off, this quote came from The Daily Mail, so rage-sharing it is like raging over something the bad guy said at WrestleMania. Even worse, all these headlines conveniently ignore where he named other black actors he'd prefer play Bond. Everybody's focused on "too rough" and "too street," while see-no-eviling the part where he recommended Hustle's Adrian Lester instead.

There's still a race issue at play here, of course -- but not in the overt, simplistic way that everybody seeing red took it as. It's deciding that black actors, who have proven their ability to play both suave and rough with equal tenacity, should only be one thing. Horowitz is typecasting Elba as a rough, street black man, and Lester as a suave, classy black man, and won't let them sit at each other's table. And nobody's talking about this except ... The Huffington Post? Really? Dear Internet: When BuzzFeed-Minus-Cat-GIFs is the voice of reason, it might be time to pay attention and rethink things.

Calling Idris Elba 'Too Street' Is Racist, Just Not For The Reason You Think
via huffingtonpost.com

Both because they're right on the money, and because it'll probably never happen again.

Ex-Bond Roger Moore got in similar hot water recently, accused of opposing Elba Bond over blackness. Moore himself had to clarify that he only said Bond should be 100 percent "English-English" -- his interviewer later edited it so it seemed like he was talking about Elba. But you know what? When Elba finally becomes Bond and blows everyone out of their seats, all this ridiculous talk of race, class, and who's street and who's not will disappear. Because it's the performance that matters, not the-

Idris Elba: James Bond Rumor is Really Starting to Eat Itself'
via hollywoodreporter.com

Wait ... it was all a rumor? He's NOT going to be Bond? There were never even talks of him being Bond, nothing but Daniel Craig dream-casting off the top of his head? We got all worked up over that? FUCK.

Every Celebrity Death Hoax Comes From The Same Source: Your Idiot Friends

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
Robin Marchant/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

The world lost the best/worst father in movie history last August when James Earl Jones sadly passed away, according to the Internet. The only person who didn't hear the news was James Earl Jones, who is still tweeting like normal. Yeah, it was another celebrity death hoax. So what happened? What crapbag news site yellow-journalism'd a beloved celebrity to an early grave this time?

and 10 others follow 11m RIP James Earl Jones! fb.me/6PkZetT3G 23 View summary follows 16m James Earl Jones dies at age 84 in Arkabutla. Mississippi.
Twitter

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooot dead yet, guys."

None, as it turns out. The source is us. We fake-killed James Earl Jones, the same way we've fake-killed every other celebrity since the days of Netscape. We're not merely part of the problem; we're all of it.

The only source for Darth Vader's voice reuniting with the Force was the Woodward-and-Bernstein-approved paragon of journalism called FeedNewz. But FeedNewz isn't a fucking news site -- its real name is prank.link, a content creator where any random asshole can plug anybody's name into the generator and create a fake news story about them. When people clicked on the "James Earl Jones dies" link to learn how an 84-year-old man could possibly pass so suddenly, they got this instead:

Owned! You Got 176123 trolled people James Earl Jones dies at age 84 in Arkabutla, Mississippi.
FeedNewz

"Also, his most famous line was 'I quit on you when you cleared out of Detroit with Willie the Pimp' ... from The Lion King."

GET IT? You thought a thing happened, but it didn't! Doesn't that tickle-torture your ribs? Here's another knee-slapper: Justin Bieber was raped and killed in Las Vegas ... except he wasn't! How gullible you must be, to think people die.

f Share on Facebook On your own Timeline Say something about this. Justin Bieber Found dead. Today at approximately 7:43 am Justin Bieber was found de
Facebook

Don't worry, David Caruso is on the case.

But if FakeNewz sounds too shady for your phony death needs, perhaps you'd prefer a website that sounds an awful lot like a legitimate one? FakeAWish.com will kill any celebrity you like and report it under the name "Global Associated News," which is the biggest waste of an official-sounding name since Dr. Phil first called himself "Dr." Then there's MSMBC.co, where you create a fake death story (like this one for Arnold Schwarzenegger) complete with a link that looks exactly like MSNBC.com if you're both blindly clicking on everything and actually blind. And when somebody clicks on it, they're greeted not by a HAHA PWNED page, but a real-ish-looking news story that you can't read until you share it with your distant uncle and that guy you haven't talked to since college:

as f SHARE Schwarzenegger G years clid TWEET Dolice resoooced to the oe emeroency fot 8 Content currently locked A simple press of the button wilunloc
MSMBC.co

Or with no one, if you go with the Google+ option.

Alternatively, if using those sites is too much work, you can go with the absolute laziest option and create a "RIP " Facebook page for someone who isn't in fact RIPing ... and then watch it grow inexplicably popular. Rowan "Johnny English" Atkinson, for example, has no fewer than two pre-posthumous Facebook pages, each with over 3,000 fans. For the sake of our species, we hope it's simply the same 3,000 who fell for the same thing twice.

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)

Stop Pretending Everyone's Offended By Movies

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
Warner Bros.

Hey, remember when those Native American actors walked off the set of Adam Sandler's new movie? It seems they were outraged over all the gross inaccuracies, blatant stereotyping, lazy jokes, and other things that have never, ever been in an Adam Sandler movie.

Native American actors reportedly walk off set Of Adam Sandler movie
via cnn.com

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
via ew.com

SHARE This STORY PRINT Native Actors Walk off Set f Like 252.770 people Ike this. B the rat of your of Adam Sandler Movie friends After Insults to Wom
via indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com"

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
via digitalspy.com

"We thought we were signing up for something more sophisticated, like a male deodorant ad."

Notice how none of those headlines mention how many actors walked off the set, implying through omission that the number was "all of them"? Well, they did that for a reason: The real situation was way less volatile (and thus, more boring) than the hate-click media reported. According to one of the actors, only four out of 154 actors walked out, plus one consultant, leaving the rest to feel "betrayed" that they were being painted as "sell-outs" to the White Man. Oh, and another actor says they all saw the script beforehand, so those who quit probably should have seen the terribleness coming, even if they haven't been to a cinema since Big Daddy came out.

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
Columbia Pictures

Precedent shows "pee-pee on your teepee" wasn't going to be a metaphor.

Then there's Mad Max: Fury Road and the supposed shitstorm it caused among Men's Rights Activists for daring to include women kicking ass:

Mad Max: Fury Road hilariously angers Men's Rights Activists'
via wired.co.uk

'Mad Max: Fury Road' draws the ire of men's rights activists
via dailydot.com

Men's rights activists call for boycott of 'Mad Max: Fury Road,' citing feminist agenda
via cnn.com

"Feminists started all the wars," one anonymous member said.

Makes sense, right? Babies throw tantrums. MRAs are babies, so they're throwing tantrums. Except they weren't. This entire story came from one blog post on We Hunted The Mammoth, which centered around the anti-Furiosa furor on Return Of Kings, a site so viciously anti-woman even Al Bundy would yell at them to grow the fuck up. But RoK isn't a MRA site -- just some random cootiephobes -- and nowhere on Mammoth does it confuse the two. Every other site, desperate for traffic, did that.

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
Warner Bros. Pictures

Misogynists want her to grow hair and make babies and sandwiches, while MRAs want her to
stop destroying masculinity. And to grow hair and make babies and sandwiches.

Did legitimate Men's Rights Assbags hate Fury Road? Sure, because vagina. But they're not nearly smart enough to organize some massive boycott of a film $375 million worth of people saw anyway. Also, despite what leading MRA loudmouths fantasize about while jerking off with mini-tweezers, nobody was "paid to put in the press." It was lazy and biased, adjectives with which MRAs should be plenty familiar. And finally, we have the time the Noah movie threw every Christian into a hateful tizzy:

Survey: Faith-Driven Consumers Dissatisfied with Noah,' Hollywood Religious Pics
via variety.com

Scripture to Screen: 'Noah' Sparks Controversy, Talk By Efrem Graham Sunday. Msrch 30. 2044 News Anchor & Reporter SHAPE Like 107 Tweet SO o-l 3 Prmt
via cbn.com

Noah Film Inspires Flood of Religious Freak- Outs -By Asaacin Suebsaengl Don Mar 27.2014 6:01 AM EDT
via motherjones.com

Noah epic awash in flood of controversy for green agenda and taking liberties with Bible Hollywood studio adds artistic licence warning for the lea
via telegraph.co.uk

That's a lot of cheek not-turning.

A survey of over 5,000 people found a whopping 98 percent were tut-tutting the movie for bastardizing the Bible. One problem: That survey focused on "faith-driven consumers," and was organized by an ultra-religious group called ... FAITH DRIVEN CONSUMER. They urge boycotts of anything that disagrees with their interpretation of the Bible, and are the same company behind IStandWithPhil, a petition to reinstate that homophobic guy from Duck Dynasty. Even Family Feud surveys like "Name a body part that rhymes with 'eenis'" aren't that obviously slanted.

Nope, That Actor Didn't Confirm A Sequel To That Movie

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)
Universal Television

You know how we've dumbed down "literally" and "irony" so morons can feel literate too? "I literally ate an entire pig yesterday, and ironically, I literally ate an entire pig today, too!" We're doing that crap with "confirm" now. Where once it meant "official news from an official source," it now means "anybody saying anything about anything."

Like these constant breaking news stories about a celebrity "confirming" a sequel to some film, when it turns out all they really said was "yeah it'd be cool to do that maybe." Recently, the Internet went bonkers over Keanu Reeves supposedly saying that Speed 3 was going to happen:

NERDIST NEWS EXCLUSIVE: IS SPEED 3 HAPPENING WITH KEANU REEVES? POSTED BY DAN CASEY ON SEPTEMBER 23, 2014 SHARE: f g
via nerdist.com

Keanu Reeves Says He Would Return For 'Speed 3' M R Als Orange. Movieweb Sep. 25. 2014. 11:37AM 1.937 01 FACEROOK in UNKEDN YYE FMAL UINT
via businessinsider.com

After Years Of Saying No, Keanu Reeves Now Game For 'Speed 3'
via slashfilm.com

The biggest question now is: Which of the e's will they replace with a 3?

But no, Speed 3 isn't happening, for two reasons. Number one: Speed 2. Number two: Keanu was making a goddamn joke. Some reporter asked him about Speed 3, and he said, "Oh my god, Speed 3: Redemption. Sure. Jack Traven kind of like, dusting it off." That's sarcasm, folks -- another term we've dumbed down because nobody can get it right.

DEAT FESTIVAL DI
Marc Piasecki/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Granted, it can be hard to tell with this guy.

Even SlashFilm admits (at the end, when everybody's stopped reading) that this is probably a non-story, writing "I'm not sure I take the affirmative answer that seriously, but he said it and it's our job to tell you what he said." It's also your job to cleverly edit your headlines so overexcited Speed demons click and share your gossip without a second thought, it would seem.

Ewan McGregor ran into this too, with headlines screaming about how he'd be down with doing Trainspotting 2, even though it's absolutely not happening.

Ewan McGregor Says He's Up for a Trainspotting Sequel 96 f Share Pin on Facebook Tweet SHARES
via people.com

How old is the ceiling baby now, anyway?

Good God, three paragraphs in, the man admits "I've not seen a script yet and I don't know if there is one." And yet People reported this anyway. You might as well report on him debating whether to order pizza or Chinese food.

Even Beetlejuice 2 isn't as done a deal as the headlines make it seem:

Winona Ryder confirms a Beetlejuices sequel is happening RY JESSICA DERSCHOWITZ OJESSICASARA f Share 203794 Twect 1051 g+ 104 P o t
via ew.com

Michael Keaton better start practicing his surf moves.

This "confirmation" was her going on Seth Meyers and yammering, "Um, I think I can confirm it, because Tim Burton did this interview -- like, it was very hush-hush, top secret ... and then he was doing some press for Big Eyes and he did an on-camera interview and he said, 'Oh yeah, we're doing it and Winona's going to be in it,' and I was like ."

And we were like . Until some studio gives us an official release date (like Universal recently did with Jurassic World 2), Beetlejuice 2: At Least Lydia's Legal This Time is nothing but actors talking.

But boy do we love when actors talk -- we'll believe anything they say, even when it's so obviously a stupid joke. Like Michael Shannon saying he would return as General Zod for Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice, but with flipper hands:

Wait, Who Is Michael Shannon Playing In Batman V Superman? BY ADAM HOLMES 8 MONTHS AGO 59 COMMENTS
via cinemablend.com

'Batman V Superman': Michael Shannon Hints at Zod's Fate
via screenrant.com

Michael Shannon Reveals a Strange Change for Zod in Batman V Superman S SPEMCER PERRY 4LIG 19 2015 f Liike 006 Tweet 14 G+ 28
via superherohype.com"

Exclusive: Michael Shannon Reveals New Details About His Batman V. Superman Role Joe Comicbook  09/10/2015 3 comments f 3K 212
via comicbook.com

That's almost as silly as the name of the movie.

Notice how none of those headlines say "flipper hands"? That's because even the writers know it's bollocks, but they still want to suck you in and get your clicks, so they tease you "new details" and "strange change." Except according to Shannon himself, Zod is stone dead, he only appears via voiceover, and the flipper thing was him being a silly goose:

Somebody was asking me about this in New York and I made up some ridiculous bullshit answer about how my character Zod has flippers, and this went vi
via thedailybeast.com

A Batman story starring a guy with flippers? That's preposterous.

Welcome to the Internet, Shannon, where you can't believe everything you read, except for that one thing you're about to share with your buddies. That thing? Totally believable.

Jason would love to be in Bill And Ted 3 -- this is technically breaking news. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter for more breaking news about things he'd like to do one day maybe.

Also check out 6 True Stories That Explain Why Famously Bad Movies Sucked and 6 Reasons Movies Suck (That Hollywood Hasn't Figured Out).

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more proof why following the news is foolish in The 4 Stupidest Things the News Apparently Cares About, and watch other videos you won't see on the site!

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