Another viral Hoax fools the media: Suicide bombing in California town is viral for movie.

The "Viral as deception" trend isn't restricted to small countries random tourist ads, and Swedish&Danish press aren't the only ones that fall for such things. Germany is the capitol of quick-to-print-press, and the recent viral hoax for the film Short Cut to Hollywood had even their main news wire service fooled.

First, the trick was to convince Germany that there was a city named Bluewater in California, a website was set up looking all official and bland. It even had links to fake local TV stations and numbers which one could call to reach officials. These were all US looking Skype numbers, thus reaching the German hoaxers not the officials of a small Californian town. The TV added images to the story by showing footage of the 'suicide bombings' aftermath.

Then a frantic 'reporter' called German TV-stations describing a suicide bombing attack that took place in this small town and directed them to the official small town websites. TV reporters then called the numbers on the website and had the story confirmed by the people behind the hoax.

The DPA bought it - sending the story out on the wires promting thousands of journalists to start writing stories on it. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung even wrote a 1000 word obit. German reporters from all sorts of press then called The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office - shutting down the Sheriff's offices ability of taking calls on real issues going on in San Bernardino.

Wired has an article on the net hoax that made Germans jam the switchboards at the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s office. As you can see by a number of upset comments, people are not pleased that some crazy Germans prank caused problems for the Sheriff.

yeah, ha ha ha- funny joke — until your mother needs an ambulance or you need the police because of a burglar is in your house - and you can’t get through to the police because some no-talent idiots tied up all the lines with a fake news story to promote a C grade movie.

See you in Hollywood, kids. & Protip: you might want to avoid the suicide bomber topic.