The internet can be confusing. Two days ago, a headline appeared on FARK which stated "Metallica sues band over unsanctioned usage of the E chord." The link claimed to go to MTVNews, but actually went to an article at 411Mania, a site with which I'm not very familiar. The links go to a page at ScoopThis, and references a press release supposedly from metallica.com. The 411Mania article mistakenly attributed the report to MTV.com. As we read on snopes.com, the whole thing was a hoax, which is apparently the specialty of ScoopThis. The hoax was so well done that it was picked up by Ananova, although they have since removed the story from their site without comment. This is reminiscent of a few months ago, when Yahoo News picked a story from the Weekly World News about a time-traveling trader, a story which fooled a lot of people (and also made its way to Fark). Addition: one writer for Court TV noted that this hoax was easy to spot (the spoof pages were not actually on Metallica or MTV's web server). He then took the point ad absurdum and found that "A quick search of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's online database turned up registrations for Metallica branded footballs, Metallica-branded sweatshirts and sunglasses -- but no 'Metallica-branded chords.'" [link] In other internet related news... A man in Taiwan wanted to test his girlfriend by pursuing her via an online alter-ego. She fell in love with the alter-ego after a period of "dating" him online (How do people date online? I just don't get that... I mean I don't know what it is. It just doesn't seem like the kind of thing you can do online. Like, "I'm going to go eat a hamburger on the internet." It just doesn't work. Unless dating is nothing more than a RPG....) Anyway, the girl told the guy that she'd fallen in love with the online guy (who was actually the guy) and the guy was so distraught that he killed himself [link]. Japan has had problems with online suicide pacts [Mainichi Daliy News]. Not to be outdone, Germany has produced a man who posted an online ad looking for someone who wanted to be killed and eaten. Perhaps not surprisingly (this is Germany, after all), he found a willing companion. "He allegedly chopped the body into pieces, deep-froze parts of it and buried the rest, capturing the crime on a videotape which is being used as evidence." [CNN]