It's a classic story of the power of the Interwebs, and the bottomless hunger for stories by the 24 hour cable news stations: A made up story gets posted by an online joke site. The story gets picked up by the UMass student newspaper. Story hits the web again as factual, goes viral, and cable news latches on with their usual the-sky-is-falling subtlety.
The story referred to a study that suggested the dramatic rise on college campuses of cases of Herpes Simplex 1, the virus that causes cold sores, was caused by multiple people drinking from the same cups during games of Beer Pong.
Yesterday the CDC
posted a notice on its website that the story is a hoax. Beer pong does not cause herpes. It may lead to online shaming pics and waking up next to your chem lab partner, but not herpes.
And as Stephen Colbert shows below, Fox & Friends was right on top of things.
via
videosift.com