5 B.S. News Stories That Fooled Your Friends (Part 24)

Pretty hot stuff. The source passed around is a BBC documentary about a dolphin trainer having an "extra special" relationship with one of the more dick-attentive aquatic mammals. Shockingly, and despite what every site covering it says, the documentary never implies that she had any kind of sex with this thing. Rather, she begrudgingly allowed the horny critter to have his way with her extremities. If this was newsworthy, every dog owner ever would be an Internet celebrity.

Seriously, we're sorry to disappoint the many dolphin erotica enthusiasts whose imaginations were sparked by this story, but the sexiest sentence in the original video is "He would rub himself on my knee, my foot, or my hand, and I allowed that" -- which, for Gawker, is the same as the lady giving out "dolphin hand jobs," so they went ahead and inserted that phrase into her quotes:

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"His peter, more specifically."

In fact, Gawker was so devoted to the dolphin-fucking narrative that they decided to go with this headline to further ramp up the freak show factor ...

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Bullshit, dolphins are very rough lovers, not gentle. Not that we, uh ... shit.

... despite quoting the woman flat-out saying that it wasn't sexually mutual. Because as Walter Lippmann once said, "There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil [unless there's a chance to make it look like someone fucked a fish, then go for it]."

In other words, the "mystery" creature the news has been going on about was a mystery only because no one bothered to watch the entire documentary they were linking to -- the movie highlights the culprit as a 16-foot great white, as opposed to "Godzilla." And while 16 feet is still 15.9 more feet than we're comfortable with on a shark, it's nothing compared to the 23-footer that currently holds the record for "shit your pants" size.

On the upside, the brief media panic this thing caused has at least ensured that DARPA is secretly working on the real Gipsy Danger by now. A dark day for journalism; a bright one for giant monster-fighting robots!

Did you think, "Huh, that seems a little too perfect to be real"? Then congratulations, you have better journalistic instincts than people who report the news for a living! And if you thought to reverse-Google that image to find out where it came from, well, there's probably a Pulitzer in your mailbox already.

You see, the adorable hand-written note that has no doubt flooded your news feed originally came from a comedy blog called Hairpin Turns Ahead, with a heading recommending that people who enjoyed the letter should also check out a clearly satirical rejection letter from a fitness club, as well as an acceptance letter to a fictional reality TV show. In other words, this entire story begins with the author saying "If you liked this totally fake letter, you'll love these other fake letters I made" -- none of which stopped everyone from local news to fucking Perez Hilton from passing it along like it wasn't an overt joke.

In other news, hey, look what our kid wrote!

Banksy

D'awww! Now give us those viral content dollars, dammit.

Yes, that's what this world has come to: Those dang unruly teenagers with their Twilight movies, Miley Cyrus music, and public make-out sessions have finally gone too far and caused some irreparable damage. But did the whole bridge collapse, like the first headline implies, or just part of it? How bad is the damage? What's the body count? Well, let's look up a photo of the disaster area and find out ...

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Oh.

Wait, really?

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People started leaving "Never forget" cards on the board, and it promptly collapsed again.

So, let's get this straight: The chain link on a small section of a very large bridge collapsed temporarily ... and that made international news? While atrocities like bloody revolutions and World Cups are going on? Huff Post even went so far as to highlight the bridge's evacuation, like there was an impending domino effect that would end in mass chaos and not just a routine security measure lifted the following day. Hell, you can clearly see that the railing didn't even completely collapse, making every aspect of this story a hyperbolic mess.

Of course, this just means that when a whole bridge in Paris does fall down, the media is gonna paint it as the entire city breaking off and drifting into space. Keep that in mind for a future sequel to this article.