Urban Legends

Gosh, that's a tough call.

Once the scourge of Paul Bunyan's lumberjacks, the deadly snow snake has returned!

This viral ad promising "100% free food" at Chipotle restaurants through March 20 was not issued by Chipotle Mexican Grill, is not valid, and won't be honored at any Chipotle locations. A notice on the company's official Facebook page reads as follows:

There's no such thing as a free lunch - or burrito for that matter. The "repost, tag, and follow for FREE" offer that is floating around the interwebs is A HOAX. Not real. Not from Chipotle.

A March 4 company tweet said the ad is "100% fake. It's a fake offer from a scam account."

All signs indicate that the ad did, in fact, originate as a like-farming scam, of which there are myriad examples circulating every day via every social media platform.

Needless to say, it should not be reposted, shared, or liked.

FACT: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg probably knows how to spell "campaign."

No sooner had a hitherto unheard-of company named HUVr Tech posted a promo video for its new product, supposedly a functioning hoverboard as seen in Back to the Future II, than the crowdsourced debunkery began with folks pointing out that there's clear evidence that cables were used to give the illusion of flight, and in one shot you can even see the shadow of a crane rigging as a hoverboarder zooms by.

Now Mashable.com is reporting that the online resume of a costume designer who worked on the shoot lists Funny or Die as the production company behind the commercial.

We knew all along it was too good to be true. Right?

Posts like this keep popping up all over Facebook:

But Will Smith isn't dead, nor is he currently filming Bad Boys III, nor is there a video showing how he (supposedly) died.

So, what's with the bogus posts? It's a scam. The posts are spreading because people are being suckered into attempting to view the nonexistent video. Then they're suckered into granting a rogue application permission to access their Facebook profile and post on their behalf. Basically, the bogus posts are reproducing themselves with users' help. Read More...

Folks are asking whether a new company called BiteLabs is real.

This is their concept: "BiteLabs grows meat from celebrity tissue samples and uses it to make artisanal salami."

Oh, yeah. Totally real.

As tweeted earlier today...

"Just like testing if you are pregnant, a home kit to test homosexuality is now available," reported Kenya's Standard Digital News today. "The kit, which can be used to tell whether one is homosexual or not can be used at home and comes with instructions on how to use it."

A similar story turned up on Nairobi News Online, which noted, "It has been made easier now for one to know at an early stage if one is straight or not."

Homosexuality is strongly frowned upon in Kenya, which has strict laws against homosexual behavior.

The news about a home test for homosexuality is more than a bit premature, however — or 17 years too late, depending on how you look at it. Today's reports are apparently based on a Nov. 11, 1997 feature in the satirical newspaper The Onion touting a fictitious product called "HomoSure."

There is no medical test for homosexuality. Given the inhumane uses to which it could be put, let's hope one is never invented.

Details inside...

It's time for a reality check, Internet.

An article on the humor website Huzlers.com claiming that a 7-year-old child named Eli Moreno went missing after playing with the Talking Angela app on his mother's iPhone is pure fiction. Nothing of the kind happened. As stated in the disclaimer beneath the article, "Huzlers.com is a combination of real shocking news and satire news to keep its visitors in a state of disbelief." Elsewhere on the site it's claimed that McDonald's restaurants serve "human meat." This is not a reliable source. Read More...