Pho, lies and CLE.

I was having my weekly bowl of pho — but not at the phonetically mischievous Beaverton, Oregon restaurant pictured above. If you don’t know, the Vietnamese rice noodle and beef soup known as pho is pronounced ‘fuh.’ You figure out the rest.

In any event, I was slurping and reading about an Aussie-Vietnamese hoaxer who’d punked the news and online social media. The faker falsely claimed Facebook had discriminated against him by repeatedly shutting down his Facebook profile over accusations he was using a fake name. He claimed his name was ‘Phuc Dat Bich’ and even posted an online image of his passport to ‘prove’ it was really his given name.

But Facebook was right after all. The name was fake, all part of an elaborate social media spoof perpetrated by a 23-year old Melbourne, Australia man named Tin Le or Thien Nguyen — if you believe someone else who later claimed to have known “Phuc” from his school days.

Phonetic political correctness.

The hoaxer explained that he’d created the phonetically rude ‘Phuc Dat Bich’ name hoax to fool the media and to tweak Facebook over its real names policy. “I’ve never believed it’s necessary for it to be mandatory to have your entire name to be published on social media,” he expounded. “People should be free to use any name they desire. Facebook needs to understand that it is utterly impossible to legitimise a place where there will always be pranksters and tricksters,” he added.

B.S. on the Web.

So no surprise. The web is full of hoaxes, urban legends, falsely attributed quotes, netlore and just pasture-variety bull. A healthy dose of skepticism ought to be axiomatic, especially when it comes to much of what ‘goes viral’ on the Internet.

Just this week there was another bogus story, ‘World’s biggest’ drug kingpin El Chapo declares war on ISIS. More bull, this time from a misunderstood satirist. Memo to literary device humorist — it’s not satire if no one gets it. But also blame the 24/7 all-news-all-the-time media that irresponsibly runs stories without bothering to fact-check. Chapo didn’t threaten “true terror” in an encrypted email to Isis leaders. It was another hoax.

Not long ago, one pundit contended the Internet had birthed a “Golden Age of Fact-Checking.” I’m still not buying what she was selling. Fact-checking when it happens is mostly of the shamelessly belated kind or of the indefinitely postponed variety. See Truth, Lies, and the Internet – The Atlantic

Internet B.S. is particularly endemic in email and social media chain letters. Last month, somebody emailed me an essay falsely attributed to football coach turned sports commentator Lou Holtz. The “Two Americas” essay I received was entitled “Lou Holtz Nails It!” — although, he didn’t. It was authored by someone else a lot less famous than Lou.

Fortunately, with year-end upon us and lawyers scrambling to complete last-minute calendar CLE, now’s as good a time as any to turn away from lies, nonsense and cow pie capers. I’m happy to provide instead the latest FREE CLE updates.

And while “CLE as practiced has little or no verifiable impact on attorney competence or public protection” — comply we must.

The usual disclaimers about jurisdictional creditworthiness, continued availability, and content quality apply.

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