This might be satire

Many IU basketball fans were shocked last week when they read a CNN.com headline that said Jeff Newton and Bracey Wright had been suspended from the IU basketball team. Fans became confused and upset at this shocking turn of events that came completely out of the blue.\nAs the saying goes, 'the joke was on them.' The "CNN" site was actually linked from the humor page www.Spo0fed.com, a Web site that focuses on Internet practical jokes and pranks. According to the IDS, this hoax spread from a good-natured ribbing in the IU offices to a campus scare within a few days. As expected, people got mad when they realized that they were fooled. But that's just normal behavior for someone who just had a prank pulled on them. Unfortunately, it looks like this joke might turn itself back on its tellers.\nAs of January 30, the Spo0fed front page has been down and the fake CNN webpage generator has been removed. The IU basketball hoax wasn't the only joke from the CNN generator to cause damage. According to the (www.snopes.com), people using the fake CNN generator have written such obviously fake news stories like the 'accidental' drug overdose death of Dave Matthews and the enrollment of the Olsen twins at Purdue University.\nTo most people who read newspapers -- or Web sites -- any stories as outrageous as any of the previously mentioned should be very suspect. After all, if what happened was true, then there should be more than just one news outlet covering it. Add into that equation that most of the fake CNN articles were reportedly poorly written and filled with numerous grammatical mistakes, the validity of these stories seems incredibly flimsy. After all, if Dave Matthews really did die, I'm certain that you'd hear about from more than just one source. Reportedly, at the bottom of the page, the article also even came clean and admitted it was a joke.\nInstead of just accepting the fact that they were fooled, many of those tricked by the fake CNN generator feel outraged long after the joke was pulled. There is threat of libel and copyright infringement against the makers of the fake CNN.com headline generator. This seems ridiculous. Suing a little Internet hoax site just shows that you can't take a joke. What problems were caused by this site? None. No one died and no one profited from it.\nJust because we're hooked up to the Internet constantly doesn't mean we automatically become wiser. We still have to use our common sense when surfing the web. After all, anyone out there can post whatever they want. Facts can be made up in an instant and can easily be misinterpreted. In late 2001, religious fundamentalist groups were up in arms because of an article forwarded around the Internet: "Harry Potter Books Spark Rise in Satanism Among Children." The article came from the humor magazine The Onion, a Web site known for publishing satirical news pieces. Still, that didn't stop people from taking something so obviously silly as serious. \nJust because information is presented doesn't mean that it's always true. Remember the Halloween night radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" caused mass hysteria, even though it specifically mentioned it was fiction. There's a lot of information out there, but not all of it is true. In this technological age, we need to be more aware of what's going on around us, and not just blindly believe a Web site that has been forwarded to us.