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YouTube's V-Day breakup was a hoax

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
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Elinor Mills

You know the adage "don't believe everything you read?" Well, now it should be "don't believe everything you see on YouTube."

Two North Carolina college students admitted this week that they faked a nasty Valentine's Day breakup that was staged in front of a crowd on campus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and posted on YouTube, according to The Charlotte Observer newspaper. Various versions of the video received hundreds of thousands of hits on YouTube and national media coverage.

The tip-off that the breakup was a fraud could have been the a cappella group that sang the Dixie Chicks hit "I'm not Ready to Make Nice." Or it could have been the fact that the alleged boyfriend, Ryan Burke, had promoted the event beforehand on social-networking site Facebook. The 22-year-old Burke claimed he was breaking up with 21-year-old North Carolina State University student Mindy Moorman after four months because she cheated on him. In actuality, the two have never dated.

No doubt, their cuss-filled rants at each other make a viewer want to cringe. But even worse, because they weren't scripted, are the gladiator-like comments from the crowd, egging the couple on to even more malicious heights.

Why would the pair stage such an elaborate stunt? Burke said he wanted to show that the media "don't always accurately gauge what teenage and college kids are interested in."