NPR wrote a nice little piece about this today too regarding skepticism about stories on the internet. I rather liked the paragraph she ended the article with:To paraphrase an old bit of wisdom for our time: If you love a story, set it adrift on an ocean of suspicion that it is horsepucky. If it bobs to the surface and comes back to you and is seaworthy, it is yours to keep as part of the enjoyable flotsam and jetsam of the internet. But if it sinks like a dumbbell and the scavenging critters on the ocean floor immediately chew it to death, it was probably a dude amusing himself at the airport to begin with.
That's a lot more poetic than my, "Every story on the internet is fake until thoroughly proved otherwise."
EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS A LIE Really, though, I read about the Elan Gale thing, it was funny, but I didn't think it was worth the attention it was getting. Now, I think the same thing, except more. (Or less. I don't think it deserves all this outcry about how it's fake, because you know what? That's still us talking about it. )