Fake Syria Boy Hero on YouTube - "It was a Pun!"

Anyone remember ANYONE getting jailed or prosecuted for Internet bootlegging, fraud or "spoofs?"

That's why it keeps happening.

The excuse is "it's the wild wild Internet" and "what's the harm in a joke" or "it's free speech" or "nah, too much effort and what kind of monetary award can we get?"

SO...

Goo goo, kiddies. GOOGLE did it again. They let a fucking fraud on YouTube.

"We're just a venue," smirks YouTube. Why should they bother regulating their site so that con-artists and copyright-thieves aren't rampant? They've got people posting a few minutes of a bootleg concert or old TV show followed by the website or phone number where you can BUY the whole illegal item. That's fine with YouTube, too.

The news was full of the heartrending video of a Syrian boy racing back and forth, apparently dodging bullets, till he reached a car, pulled out a little girl, and together they ran "for safety." The world went into a fucking viral uproar: "What a brave kid! Oh how sad! How heroic! Hope they made it!"

Some of the more cynical TV stations (that would include New York City) showed the clip, and merely aid, "It's gone viral, nobody knows if it's real or not."

Now we know.

Some idiot got fortune (three million YouTube hits means a LOT of money...it's also a lot of time wasted for people who watched and worried about this shit). Now he wants FAME, too, as he tells the world, er, um, he did it to illustrate how bad war is.

No, that's not it. It was a palindrome.

No, it was a pun.

That's right. Don't call it a callus hoax. Don't call it a spoof, even. Or pfishing (for money via YouTube hits). It was just a decent, law-abiding citizen making a valiant anti-war statement. And it was a pun.

Now everybody wait for the next stupid viral abuse.

The Internet...hoaxes, full frontal nudity on eBay, Photoshop pictures of actresses being raped (again, for sale on eBay), some dimwit in Sweden or Holland giving away everybody's music every day...it's ALL good.