6 BS News Stories That Went Viral: The Girl With Three Boobs

That's Telegraph, The Hollywood Reporter, E! Online, Huffington Post, and International Business Times reminding us that, like the ocean, the Internet is a vast chilly abyss that cradles unspeakable wonder as well as waking nightmares. We'll leave you to decide which category triple boobs fall under, because we honestly have no idea.

For those of you wondering if this means Martian mind-vacations are just around the corner, it shockingly turns out there are a few things off about this story. Like the fact that the woman has refused to name any of the doctors involved, won't show her new gift to the world for more than a quick few seconds up close, or that she once filed a missing baggage claim listing "3 breast prosthesis" as one of the stolen items. Also relevant? She once apparently described herself as a "provider of Internet hoaxes since 2014."

via snopes.com
"One copy of How to Scam Dipshits on the Internet, paperback edition."

So, yeah, that's a hoax. Congratulations, news -- you gave a limelight-hungry weirdo with rubber tits the 15 minutes she wanted, all because doing a background check is way harder than slathering your front page with click-grabbing boobies and calling it a successful day.

Haha, nope! Just like the "waterproof phones" prank, the hoax we're debunking here isn't that you can recharge your iPhone by microwaving it (you can't), but rather the idea that people are stupid enough to actually try it. While there's always the possibility that a few soggy-brained socialites may have given it a whirl, the majority of Twitter posts that News.au, Metro, LA Times, PC Mag, International Business Times, and Mashable have been referring to are either from people who immediately revealed they were joking, or from people who shared pictures like these ...

twitter.com/Fallenbot

twitter.com/JordanBeeTheGee
"No, stupid. You have to cover it in tin foil to protect it. Duh."

... which already existed on the Internet years ago. So either those microwave explosions were so strong that they sent the phones back in time, or this whole thing is bullshit. We're not going to say that nobody has set their new iPhone to defrost, but it certainly isn't the widespread phenomenon we seem to want it to be.

And speaking of phone-related shenanigans ...

That's because nowhere in the original article does it say that any physical towers are being built -- the "phony cell towers" they're referring to are intercepting devices that could fit in your backpack, like computers and radios. But, thanks to the use of the word "tower" in the headline, news sites everywhere simply stopped there and scrambled over to Google Images for the rest of the story -- causing everyone to assume that the world was being attacked by some bizarre terrorist cell of steel-welding hacker ninjas.

Would this story get as much attention if the same thing was tried in, say, Washington? No, it wouldn't, and we know that because it actually was (for a reality show). That's where China got the idea. They were making fun of us. And, goddammit, it worked.

In other words, much like every day of reckoning that the media has promised us, this one can be conquered with daytime game shows and some cinnamon toast.

Total poop. Sites like CNET, The Daily Mail, Huff Post, The Blaze, and NY Post just love these things, despite the fact that most of them come from the same handful of spammy real estate/marketing blogs and are ferociously untrue. Let's take a look at one:

blog.directcapital.com
Oregon is your aunt who goes on Google by Googling Google.

The creators claim that they took the top 200 companies in the U.S. and determined what state they're most popular in by using the mysterious arcane magic of Google Trends. Let's see what happens when we try to verify their results by searching for Coca-Cola:

Google Trends

Google Trends

Looks like Georgia is in the top spot. So why then, on the map, is Home Depot on the Georgia spot, while Coke is sitting up in Virginia?

blog.directcapital.com
Why is Home Depot anywhere?

Is it because Georgia likes Home Depot more than Coke? Actually, no, not even a little bit:

Google Trends
Coke in blue, Depot in the red.

And while it's true that if you search for "The Home Depot" Georgia is the clear winner (by a far smaller margin than Coca-Cola), but remove that introductory "the" from the hardware chain's name and the story changes:

Google Trends

So why is New Hampshire suddenly the Home Depot champion instead of Georgia? Why is Coke on Virginia, when Virginia appears to care more about Facebook and YouTube? Because the methodology is total clown dicks, that's why. A map showing the four or five companies that actually rule the country wouldn't be very interesting, but make New Jersey look like it can't get enough Hellmann's Mayonnaise and suddenly everyone is clicking on your ad-bloated blog spam. Incidentally, we searched "clown dick":

Google Trends
U-S-A! U-S-A!

Do you know of a bullshit news story and/or actually have three breasts? Contact David on Twitter immediately.

For more stunning examples of internet gullibility, see 4 Reasons Facebook Is Actually Making the World Less Stupid and 4 Ways Gross Cultural Ignorance Just Made the News Hilarious.