No, they're only coming to your school via WGN or ABC Family
Well, the news and publicity concerning the fake CNN news generator will be picking up in the next few days as the operators of the Web site and the tool used to create all those hoax pages issued a press release, which is sort of an apology for what they've done. I say sorta, because you could tell that they wanted to keep this up for a while but were stopped when everything hit the fan. Instead of those funny "Olsen twins go to (fill in name of college here)", it got to the near-libel/slander stage with accusations of people being child pornographers, etc.

On my end, I had to field a couple of phone calls concerning fake sports stories being generated, even though it's not anywhere close to looking like the pages on the work site. But try explaining that to someone not completely Web-savvy (or at least savvy to the stuff done internally), and, well, it becomes an exercise in futility. At that point, this whole adventure went from silliness (with reservations) to actual concern.

Now the site has message boards discussing this little slice of Internet history. Many of the posts are just talking about how these fake stories generated silly buzz around many college campuses. A bunch are explanations of the operators' actions, and if I don't agree with everything they say, their responses have been well thought-out and coherent. On the other hand, a couple of the regular posters have just reinforced my stereotypes of many message board folks -- lots of middle-school name-calling and ad hominem attacks that prove nothing. Plus, one of them used a handle that would probably make Charlie (and people of his ilk) cringe. These are the people that probably led to the quicker downfall of the site, and they probably don't even realize it.

And maybe that's the scary part of this little episode: With the Web, and especially the rise of blogs, just about anyone can post anything they want. While it has helped give many people a deserved voice in the public arena, it also gives as many people who don't deserve it.