News alert : Some things you read on the Internet are not true . As obvious as that may seem , and as savvy as you 'd think we 'd be a decade after deposed Nigerian princes began e-mailing us with the promise of vast riches , 2013 has turned out to be the Year of the Online Hoax . And , guess what ? Most of us seemed to love every minute of it . In just the past week or so , the Web has been duped by the viral rise of a snarky Thanksgiving Day airplane spat , a not-so-poor poverty blogger and a Twitter feud between a comedian and a salsa company . And it 's no accident . Media experts say there are multiple factors at work when these sweet little lies rocket across the Web in what feels like mere minutes . First , the obvious . To be too good to be true , a story has to be good . `` Sometimes , with these stories , we all want them to be true , '' said Brian Stelter , CNN 's senior media correspondent and host of `` Reliable Sources , '' on CNN 's `` Newsroom '' Tuesday . `` And we forget , maybe , the first rule -- trust , but verify . Check it out first . '' So , when a pastor claims to teach his congregation a lesson by disguising himself as a homeless man , or a pistol-packing granny unloads on young punks playing `` The Knockout Game , '' some of us are so enamored of what the tale says about our world that we miss the warning signs . But there 's more to it than that . Fun little Internet stories , it turns out , have become big business . `` There really is a virality industry , with websites that are in the business of finding these things and blowing them up with slide shows and stories , '' Stelter told CNN 's Brooke Baldwin . He named Buzzfeed , Huffington Post and Upworthy as just a few of the many sites that thrive , at least in part , on that model . Many news sites seek to verify viral content before publishing it , although some of us occasionally get burned . In September CNN and other sites published a video of a girl appearing to catch on fire during a twerking mishap before the clip was revealed as a prank by Jimmy Kimmel 's talk show . There 's obviously an appetite for these sorts of viral stories . So finding them , pulling them together quickly and relaunching them on social media within minutes equals page views . And online , page views make advertisers happy . And advertisers mean money . `` There 's a million-clicks reward for being the first to pick up on it , '' wrote TIME 's James Poniewozik , referring to Elan Gale 's live-tweeting of his Thanksgiving Day airplane `` feud . '' `` And hundreds of follow-up , aggregations , commentaries and counter-commentaries get posted before anyone gets around to seeing if the flight data added up . '' Here are just some of the fake viral tales that have swept the Web so far this year . We 're willing to bet they wo n't be the last . Manti Te ' o 's `` girlfriend '' This one 's almost a year old and still kind of confusing . As his Notre Dame Fighting Irish were playing their way into the BCS national championship game , All-American linebacker Manti Te ' o broke hearts when he told reporters his girlfriend , a 22-year-old Stanford University student , had died of leukemia within hours of his grandmother 's death . `` I miss 'em , but I know that I 'll see them again one day , '' he told ESPN after leading the Irish to an improbable 20-3 victory over Michigan State . Except , the girlfriend never existed . Te ' o would later say he 'd never met Lennay Kekua in person , that their relationship had formed online and that he was the victim of what he called a `` sick joke '' and what Notre Dame dubbed `` an elaborate hoax . '' The homophobic non-tip . It had all the right ingredients to stir up Web outrage . It was n't enough for customers to refuse to tip waitress Dayna Morales , a 22-year-old Marine Corps veteran , who describes herself as `` out , open and proud . '' Someone in the family of four also had to leave a note saying `` I 'm sorry but I can not tip because I do not agree with ... your lifestyle and how you live your life . '' That 's the story Morales told media outlets , including CNN , last month , and the Web responded in kind . More than $ 2,000 flowed in to a PayPal account set up by her employer , Gallop Asian Bistro in Bridgewater , New Jersey . She said she 'd donate the gifts to the Wounded Warrior Project and the restaurant planned to match the donations , giving to a local gay-and-lesbian support group . But then , a local television station displayed a receipt from a family showing an $ 18 tip on a bill of $ 93.55 -- the same amount on the one Morales had originally shared on the Facebook Have a Gay Day group , and a credit card statement with the same total value , $ 111.55 , to back it up . This week , Morales was suspended at the restaurant , while it completes an investigation of exactly what happened . The poverty blogger . Give Linda Walther Tirado this : she can write . `` You have to understand that we know that we will never not feel tired , '' she wrote in one of many heartbreaking blog posts about living in poverty that were picked up by the Huffington Post and others . `` We will never feel hopeful . We will never get a vacation . Ever . We know that the very act of being poor guarantees that we will never not be poor . It does n't give us much reason to improve ourselves . '' But here 's the problem . She 's apparently not all that poor . A Houston Press investigation last week revealed that Tirado owns her home , has worked as a political consultant , attended a private boarding school and is married to a U.S. Marine . But by the time that story was out , Tirado had already raised more than $ 61,000 in donations via GoFundMe . In an update on the GoFundMe page , Tirado wrote , `` You have to understand that the piece you read was taken out of context , that I never meant to say that all of these things were happening to me right now , or that I was still quite so abject . I am not . I am reasonably normally lower working class ... '' She says she 'll use the money to collect her writing into a book and maintains that her writing was misinterpreted by readers who thought she was always describing her current living conditions . # RIP celebrity-who-is-still-alive . It 's been more than four years since Jeff Goldblum `` died '' on Twitter . But , in 2013 , the social media platform was still killing off celebrities with regularity . Celine Dion . Tom Cruise . Cher . Chloe Moretz . All , to the best of our knowledge , still alive . But all mourned this year on Twitter where bad information , whether planted intentionally or accidentally , can spread fast . It 's gotten so bad that when word of actor Paul Walker 's death in a car crash broke late Saturday , many fans remained skeptical even after legitimate news sources were reporting it . Diane in 7A . A reality TV producer just made something up . Who would have thought ? Elan Gale , a producer on ABC 's `` The Bachelor , '' captivated Twitter with his Thanksgiving Day story about a fellow passenger who was rude to flight attendants on his flight to Phoenix . Gale came to the rescue with a cheeky note , a glass of wine and , ultimately , some lowbrow insults . Within a day , the Web had split into two camps . Team Elan cheered a champion who delivered instant karma to someone being nasty to hapless service-industry folk . Team Diane declared Gale just as bad , if not worse , for preying upon someone clearly in distress and insulting her in crude language . Gale declared both teams losers a couple of days later when he returned to Twitter to share a `` photo of Diane '' -- an empty chair . Comedian vs. salsa . Fresh on the heels of Elan vs. Diane , comedian Kyle Kinane over the weekend started poking fun at what looked like an automated Twitter feed for Pace Picante Sauce that would `` favorite '' anything he wrote about the salsa -- no matter how derogatory or crude . What followed was a hilarious and cringe-worthy back-and-forth in which Pace employees offered Kinane free salsa to stop writing bad things about them , argued amongst themselves and generally made a mess of things . The main problem being that Pace Picante Sauce does n't have a Twitter feed , says its owner , the Campbell Soup Co. Kinane says he was himself pranked by other comedians who created the fake account .
Viral hoaxes hit the Internet big in 2013 . Media analyst : Spreading viral stories fast is big business . Comment: Analyst : `` Sometimes , with these stories , we all want them to be true ''