He can hear you spreading those rumors, you know.

​Meanwhile, on the other side of the fake stories about celebrity mortality spectrum, Will Smith has been killed by the Internet--specifically by a story from FakeAWish.com that claimed the former Fresh Prince had fallen to his death from a cliff in New Zealand and was circulated far and wide on Twitter, where phony stories like this one can blossom like a million 140-character weeds. He's alive, though. Oh, and there's a funny part! (Aside from the New Zealand coincidence between this item and the Tupac one, which probably speaks to the fact that the people perpetrating these hoaxes are huge nerds for the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.)

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Not a recent photo.

​Oh, those hacker kids, getting up to no good on a holiday weekend by reviving the hip-hop generation's own "Elvis Alive And Eating Giant Sandwiches Somewhere Far Away" myth. A hacker collective calling itself (sigh) The Lulz Boat got all up in PBS' web site over the weekend as a protest against the public broadcasting organization's treatment of the forcibly-unclassified-document clearinghouse WikiLeaks, and in addition to hoarding a bunch of usernames and passwords they decided to engage in a little trickery involving the current whereabouts of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.

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Yesterday the Internet lit up for a bit with news of a new track from the draggy, divisive outfit Salem. "Nite Daze," according to the email blasting it around the Internet, was "all about the drag environment of being incredibly tired, in a dream-state, wasted or on something, and forcing something creative from the mutual confused experience," and it sure sounded like at least one of those words. (Its "demo" form also didn't sound all that different from finished tracks by the outfit.) But just as soon as it popped up, links to it went dead, because as it turned out the snare-heavy track wasn't a Salem demo but... the result of an NYU project. On "culture jamming"!

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​Flattered as we are that the dudes in Fucked Up today pointed readers of their blog in our direction regarding the band's brilliant post last week about the economics of SXSW, we're gonna have to go ahead and not believe that the band is being sued by Thriller Energy Drinks for defamation, as they claim over at Looking For Gold and in this Facebook Group. "In a nice ironic twist of fate to the last time we were specifically linked to a particular group of corporations (ie when we sued Camel Cigs and Rolling Stone)," the band writes, "now we're the ones getting sued. One of the companies that was involved with presenting our official sxsw showcase (Thriller Energy Drinks) took out a claim against us yesterday for defamation. It's not a big case so it's not a huge deal, but it is a chilling reminder of what can happen when artists speak out about certain issues. We can't obv talk about it on here that much, but you can feel free to email the company yourself thx: thrillpill@thrillerenergy.com." What's the date today again?

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​When the bizarre "transcript" of an interview Beyoncé was alleged to have done with a German magazine called NEON circulated a few days back, the natural assumption was to just assume the whole thing was a hoax, or lost in translation, or never happened in the first place. But it did happen! In the sense that there is a German magazine called NEON, and they really did print a story that had the notoriously private and robotic Beyoncé summarizing her domestic life with Jay-Z by saying "I want to sit around at home, also times in a tracksuit pants. He assumes and believes that women even wear high heels just to go to the bathroom" and alluding to a multi-million dollar pre-nup between her and Jay. Skeptical? You're right! Blame a man named Ingo Mocek:

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Sam Horine, more photos from the show here

You may recall the work of "street artist" Mr. Brainwash a/k/a Thierry Guetta from CMJ 2008: his Kanye and Jim Morrison canvases flanked the stage of the Fader Fort on the Bowery, the Friendly Fires posed in front of his Alfred Hitchcock LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL stencils. But Mr. Brainwash's music-world overlap also includes the Warhol-cribbing cover art of Madonna's Celebration; though lately, he's gotten attention for his involvement in the "Roger & Me"-esque Banksy-affiliated "documentary" that premiered at Sundance last month. In any case, MBW is something of a contentious figure: he's often accused of being a conceptual sham perpetrated by anonymous art-star Banksy. Don't have to dig deep for supporting evidence--nevermind the man's moniker, Mr. Brainwash has built a career out of pop-music-star portraits made of broken records. Such images were also the bulk of his solo show that opened on Valentine's Day in 15,00-square-foot Meatpacking District space; Sam Horine's photographs of the Beatles, Jay-Z, and one giant boombox below.

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​OK, so that almost certainly is not Rihanna, though the location does in fact seem to be New York's own Johnny Utah's, and you can't even actually watch the video here because whatever Celebuzz is, they don't believe in embeds, but whatever, what if it were true? One commenter claims this video is authentic because the woman in question has "Rihanna's BIG FLOPPY FEET." On the other hand, she's not blonde, and Rihanna was in Miami last week and in Japan this week, so--old? Fake? Hilarious? Definitely hilarious. [h/t trusted news source Idolator]

Nihalani's "Drop," via the artist's photostream

​Not actually made by Aakash Nihalani, clarifies the artist in an email. He refers you instead to a comment on another blog "that I think says it pretty well." Want to see the real thing? Actual recent Nihalani work, here. Anyone know who did the dirty (and, um, suspiciously derivative) work for VW in lieu of the real thing? [Earlier]

The three on the right: Henry Rollins, Greg Ginn, and Chuck Biscuits, elusive even in Black Flag. Photo by Dave Markey.

​As harsh as 2009 has been for celebrity deaths, it's been an even harsher year for Internet-based fake celebrity deaths. As of June, the real-to-fake death ratio has approached one-to-two: Michael Jackson's demise not only clogged the Internet for a day, but also sucked down Harrison Ford (missing and believed drowned) and Jeff Goldblum (plummeted off the very same New Zealand cliff that claimed Tom Hanks in 2006 and Tom Cruise in 2008). Just in the last three years, the world has briefly mourned Miley Cyrus (car crash), Matt Damon (plane crash), Paris Hilton (stabbed to death in jail), Natalie Portman (another NZ cliff casualty), and Britney Spears (general debauchery). Last month's imaginary Kayne car crash was the lead story the morning after it didn't happen. Although obit-bots have apparently churned out some celeb deaths on autopilot, the hoax surge has been greatly lubed by the rise of Twitter. During WW2, misinformation's biggest target was troop movements; in the age of Afghanistan, it's snuffed celebs.

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