#but some of you need to chill w these big claims involving serious meaning

[goldira01]

Do it yourself or outsource it? Rightly or wrongly, most people seem to fear the IRS, and an IRS audit can be daunting, even if it is entirely by correspondence. Most considerations are arguably the same in many different kinds of tax audits. However, crypto tax matters can be even more sensitive than many others. One reason is return filings and records. 

Let’s face it, many crypto investors have not been exactly scrupulous about filing taxes on time, reporting consistently, and keeping good records. After all, doing all of that isn’t easy, although it has gotten easier over the last year or two. 

Related: The IRS Is Blindly Coming After Cryptocurrency Traders — Here’s Why

Another reason is the IRS focus on crypto. The IRS has said that virtual currency is an ongoing focus area for IRS criminal investigations, following its announcement on a Virtual Currency Compliance campaign to address tax noncompliance related to the use of virtual currency through outreach and audits. For some time now, the IRS has been hunting crypto user identities with software too. The IRS keeps stressing noncompliance related to virtual currency transactions through a variety of efforts, ranging from taxpayer education to audits to criminal investigations. 

A wake-up call

Remember the IRS summons for John Doe to get Coinbase user accounts? More of those could be coming. More recently, the IRS sent thousands of letters to people with virtual currency transactions stating that they may have failed to report income or pay taxes properly. The IRS says it identified these targets through various IRS compliance efforts. IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig seems to think this should be a wake-up call, and a warning. 

The most frightening part of the IRS is the Criminal Investigation Division, although its involvement in an audit is rare. Even so, it is important to have a sound understanding of how criminal tax issues arise, so you can be prepared. Many people are surprised to learn that the vast majority of IRS criminal tax cases arise because of so-called “referrals” from the civil division of the IRS. 

It happens from plain civil audits and civil IRS collection activity. One IRS Agent spots or hears something fishy and passes it on. It can start innocuously. During the course of an audit or a tax collection matter, a civil IRS auditor discovers something that seems odd and refers it to the Criminal Investigation Division. You may not even know that you are being investigated. Of course, many investigations do not lead to prosecutions. However, if you are contacted by the IRS Criminal Investigation Division, whether as a target or as a witness, you should politely decline to be interviewed. Refer them to your lawyer.

Related: IRS Expands Penalties: Which Tax Mistakes Are Better Not to Commit

Many people think that cryptocurrency could be the next big thing for the IRS, which has been training its criminal agents for Bitcoin and other virtual currencies — and that should tell you something. If the IRS is suspicious, they can require you to produce records, even ones that may incriminate you. With offshore bank accounts, the IRS refined this technique by seeking a grand jury subpoena to produce your offshore bank records. 

Many Americans have a knee-jerk reaction to this. “Just take the Fifth,” lawyers tend to say. The Fifth Amendment says you cannot be forced to incriminate yourself. However, the IRS can make you produce these required records even if they will incriminate you. You may be able to refuse to speak under the Constitution, but sometimes, you cannot refuse to produce certain records. 

Getting professional help vs. DIY

To return to more normal tax audits and notices, if the IRS audits you or has begun sending you notices and so on, should you handle it yourself or get professional help? The answer can vary, but getting help is often the wiser path. If the IRS visits you in person, hire a lawyer. No personal visit should be taken lightly. You have no legal obligation to talk to the IRS, whether it is the civil or the criminal part of the IRS contacting you. Politely tell them that your lawyer will contact them, and ask for their business card.

It is unlikely that the IRS will push you to talk after you say this.  But even if they do, politely decline. Even if the IRS says you are just a witness and that it is someone else they are pursuing, you do not have to talk. Besides, who is a witness and who is a target of an investigation can be quite fluid — it can and does change. Written notices and other materials are obviously considerably less threatening. However, even if the query or audit is all in writing, most people feel a chill when dealing with the IRS. 

You might receive a letter from the IRS asking about some aspect of your tax return. You might want to handle it yourself — but be cautious and reflective if you do, especially in more serious matters. The point at which you may need a representative is often early. In fact, some taxpayers spend large sums with tax professionals precisely because they initially tried to handle the case themselves. Sometimes, you can dig a hole that runs deeper than if you had handed the case to a professional from the start.

One reason to have a tax lawyer or accountant handle your audit is to get some distance. Even in a civil audit, talking to the IRS can be dangerous and can put you in a disadvantageous position. The IRS may ask you about things you don’t want to answer, but not answering is awkward if you are handling it yourself. Having a representative means you will have time outside the IRS presence to prepare appropriate responses that put the issues in the best possible light.

Some taxpayers even represent themselves beyond an audit at the IRS Appeals Division or in the United States Tax Court, although many of those cases seem to be poorly handled. Even the once-famous lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, represented himself in the U.S. Tax Court in a $4 million dispute with the IRS. Bailey won one issue but lost most of them, including claimed loss deductions for his yacht. Worse, the court approved significant negligence penalties against him that he probably could have avoided with tax counsel. Seeing to your own case clearly isn’t easy, but it usually pays to hire someone to handle it.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph. This discussion is not intended as legal advice.

Robert W. Wood is a tax lawyer representing clients worldwide from offices at Wood LLP, in San Francisco. He is the author of numerous tax books and writes frequently about taxes for Forbes.com, Tax Notes and other publications.

[preciousmetals0]

Crypto IRS Audits: Hire Professionals or Do it Yourself?

Crypto IRS Audits: Hire Professionals or Do it Yourself?:

Do it yourself or outsource it? Rightly or wrongly, most people seem to fear the IRS, and an IRS audit can be daunting, even if it is entirely by correspondence. Most considerations are arguably the same in many different kinds of tax audits. However, crypto tax matters can be even more sensitive than many others. One reason is return filings and records. 

Let’s face it, many crypto investors have not been exactly scrupulous about filing taxes on time, reporting consistently, and keeping good records. After all, doing all of that isn’t easy, although it has gotten easier over the last year or two. 

Related: The IRS Is Blindly Coming After Cryptocurrency Traders — Here’s Why

Another reason is the IRS focus on crypto. The IRS has said that virtual currency is an ongoing focus area for IRS criminal investigations, following its announcement on a Virtual Currency Compliance campaign to address tax noncompliance related to the use of virtual currency through outreach and audits. For some time now, the IRS has been hunting crypto user identities with software too. The IRS keeps stressing noncompliance related to virtual currency transactions through a variety of efforts, ranging from taxpayer education to audits to criminal investigations. 

A wake-up call

Remember the IRS summons for John Doe to get Coinbase user accounts? More of those could be coming. More recently, the IRS sent thousands of letters to people with virtual currency transactions stating that they may have failed to report income or pay taxes properly. The IRS says it identified these targets through various IRS compliance efforts. IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig seems to think this should be a wake-up call, and a warning. 

The most frightening part of the IRS is the Criminal Investigation Division, although its involvement in an audit is rare. Even so, it is important to have a sound understanding of how criminal tax issues arise, so you can be prepared. Many people are surprised to learn that the vast majority of IRS criminal tax cases arise because of so-called “referrals” from the civil division of the IRS. 

It happens from plain civil audits and civil IRS collection activity. One IRS Agent spots or hears something fishy and passes it on. It can start innocuously. During the course of an audit or a tax collection matter, a civil IRS auditor discovers something that seems odd and refers it to the Criminal Investigation Division. You may not even know that you are being investigated. Of course, many investigations do not lead to prosecutions. However, if you are contacted by the IRS Criminal Investigation Division, whether as a target or as a witness, you should politely decline to be interviewed. Refer them to your lawyer.

Related: IRS Expands Penalties: Which Tax Mistakes Are Better Not to Commit

Many people think that cryptocurrency could be the next big thing for the IRS, which has been training its criminal agents for Bitcoin and other virtual currencies — and that should tell you something. If the IRS is suspicious, they can require you to produce records, even ones that may incriminate you. With offshore bank accounts, the IRS refined this technique by seeking a grand jury subpoena to produce your offshore bank records. 

Many Americans have a knee-jerk reaction to this. “Just take the Fifth,” lawyers tend to say. The Fifth Amendment says you cannot be forced to incriminate yourself. However, the IRS can make you produce these required records even if they will incriminate you. You may be able to refuse to speak under the Constitution, but sometimes, you cannot refuse to produce certain records. 

Getting professional help vs. DIY

To return to more normal tax audits and notices, if the IRS audits you or has begun sending you notices and so on, should you handle it yourself or get professional help? The answer can vary, but getting help is often the wiser path. If the IRS visits you in person, hire a lawyer. No personal visit should be taken lightly. You have no legal obligation to talk to the IRS, whether it is the civil or the criminal part of the IRS contacting you. Politely tell them that your lawyer will contact them, and ask for their business card.

It is unlikely that the IRS will push you to talk after you say this.  But even if they do, politely decline. Even if the IRS says you are just a witness and that it is someone else they are pursuing, you do not have to talk. Besides, who is a witness and who is a target of an investigation can be quite fluid — it can and does change. Written notices and other materials are obviously considerably less threatening. However, even if the query or audit is all in writing, most people feel a chill when dealing with the IRS. 

You might receive a letter from the IRS asking about some aspect of your tax return. You might want to handle it yourself — but be cautious and reflective if you do, especially in more serious matters. The point at which you may need a representative is often early. In fact, some taxpayers spend large sums with tax professionals precisely because they initially tried to handle the case themselves. Sometimes, you can dig a hole that runs deeper than if you had handed the case to a professional from the start.

One reason to have a tax lawyer or accountant handle your audit is to get some distance. Even in a civil audit, talking to the IRS can be dangerous and can put you in a disadvantageous position. The IRS may ask you about things you don’t want to answer, but not answering is awkward if you are handling it yourself. Having a representative means you will have time outside the IRS presence to prepare appropriate responses that put the issues in the best possible light.

Some taxpayers even represent themselves beyond an audit at the IRS Appeals Division or in the United States Tax Court, although many of those cases seem to be poorly handled. Even the once-famous lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, represented himself in the U.S. Tax Court in a $4 million dispute with the IRS. Bailey won one issue but lost most of them, including claimed loss deductions for his yacht. Worse, the court approved significant negligence penalties against him that he probably could have avoided with tax counsel. Seeing to your own case clearly isn’t easy, but it usually pays to hire someone to handle it.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph. This discussion is not intended as legal advice.

Robert W. Wood is a tax lawyer representing clients worldwide from offices at Wood LLP, in San Francisco. He is the author of numerous tax books and writes frequently about taxes for Forbes.com, Tax Notes and other publications.

[adambstingus]

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)

Entertainment sites are facing a serious problem: There’s a limited number of things that happen every day, but their readers will click on an infinite amount of articles, as long as someone or something vaguely famous is involved. The solution? Follow the grand Internet tradition of making shit up. Print a headline saying “Bill Murray killed and ate Miley Cyrus!” and watch as it gets 100,000 shares before either of their publicists can deny it.

Now, all of us have fallen for stories like these in the past, but there are some particularly egregious types of bullshit articles that should really be setting off our hogwash alarms by now. Starting with …

#5. Stop Saying The Simpsons Predicted Stuff

The Internet is 80 percent porn, 70 percent fanfic on Tumblr, and 90 percent inaccurate statistics. Whatever’s left is made out of bullshit listicles about how some old Simpsons episode predicted today’s events. Apparently, they foresaw Donald Trump: Angry Half-Chewed Orange Starburst For President 15 years before it happened:

They also predicted that Lisa would be an adult by 2010, so …

But before you go proclaiming Matt Groening “King of the Psychics,” consider this: That episode aired in 2000. Guess what lying, hypocritical moron announced he’d be running for President in 2000? No no, the other one. Yes, Trump said he’d run for President under the Reform Party in 2000 (and had been talking about it since 1987), meaning The Simpsons predicted precisely squat. And as far as them “predicting” that President Trump would destroy the country … duhhhh. That’s like predicting grass will be green, or that a diaper will be loaded with shit.

Can anthropomorphic loaded diapers even legally run for president?

And we do this all. The. Fucking. Time. Unless some fat yellow dude destroys an entire city by pressing the wrong button at the power plant, it’s no big deal if real life imitates The Simpsons. It’s a topical show with damn near 600 episodes under its quarter-century-old belt. Of course there’s going to be overlap with reality — which hasn’t stopped sites like BuzzFeed from marveling over the matter. Let’s review their mind-blowing discoveries:

So the Simpsons made an irradiated food joke, and now Japan’s got irradiated fruit? That’s not a new idea. If anything, the vegetation around Chernobyl predicted The Simpsons. Oh, and the deformed Japanese veggies were bullshit anyway. Off to a good start, BuzzFeed!

OK. So. In 2004, a bunch of Ohio voting machines glitched and accidentally gave George W. Bush 4,000 extra votes. In 2008, the Simpsons satirized that incident. In 2012, it happened again for real. And that’s supposed to be a score for Homer and friends how? Just because your memory was crippled by all those ’90s nostalgia GIF parades doesn’t mean that the past suddenly didn’t happen, BuzzFeed.

This is probably the closest one: They successfully predicted that somebody who works with wild animals would eventually get attacked by one. Impressive. What’s next, claiming that The Simpsons predicted baseball players playing softball?

DICK TRACY, YOU ASSHOLES! THE JETSONS! EVEN THE FUCKING FLINTSTONES! Somebody got paid for this list! You know what, we’re moving on before this gives us an aneurysm.

Arrrrghhh! Too late!

#4. People Need To Chill About Idris Elba Playing James Bond

Eventually, Daniel Craig will stop being James Bond. And despite the fact that he’s a totally outdated character, tradition dictates that we’ll need a new one. One of the top names being bandied about is Idris Elba, who deviates from the Bond norm in one glaringly obvious way …

“The world isn’t ready for a Bond with facial hair. Sorry.”

OK, there’s also the race thing, an issue which Bond novelist Anthony Horowitz dealt with in the worst possible way. In an interview with The Daily Mail, he claimed that Elba would suck as Bond because he’s “too street.” The Internet responded by figuratively painting Horowitz’s naked body gold and leaving him to asphyxiate.

Most were only scandalized to find out there are still Bond books, though (or books in general).

First off, this quote came from The Daily Mail, so rage-sharing it is like raging over something the bad guy said at WrestleMania. Even worse, all these headlines conveniently ignore where he named other black actors he’d prefer play Bond. Everybody’s focused on “too rough” and “too street,” while see-no-eviling the part where he recommended Hustle‘s Adrian Lester instead.

There’s still a race issue at play here, of course — but not in the overt, simplistic way that everybody seeing red took it as. It’s deciding that black actors, who have proven their ability to play both suave and rough with equal tenacity, should only be one thing. Horowitz is typecasting Elba as a rough, street black man, and Lester as a suave, classy black man, and won’t let them sit at each other’s table. And nobody’s talking about this except … The Huffington Post? Really? Dear Internet: When BuzzFeed-Minus-Cat-GIFs is the voice of reason, it might be time to pay attention and rethink things.

Both because they’re right on the money, and because it’ll probably never happen again.

Ex-Bond Roger Moore got in similar hot water recently, accused of opposing Elba Bond over blackness. Moore himself had to clarify that he only said Bond should be 100 percent “English-English” — his interviewer later edited it so it seemed like he was talking about Elba. But you know what? When Elba finally becomes Bond and blows everyone out of their seats, all this ridiculous talk of race, class, and who’s street and who’s not will disappear. Because it’s the performance that matters, not the-

Wait … it was all a rumor? He’s NOT going to be Bond? There were never even talks of him being Bond, nothing but Daniel Craig dream-casting off the top of his head? We got all worked up over that? FUCK.

#3. Every Celebrity Death Hoax Comes From The Same Source: Your Idiot Friends

The world lost the best/worst father in movie history last August when James Earl Jones sadly passed away, according to the Internet. The only person who didn’t hear the news was James Earl Jones, who is still tweeting like normal. Yeah, it was another celebrity death hoax. So what happened? What crapbag news site yellow-journalism’d a beloved celebrity to an early grave this time?

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooot dead yet, guys.”

None, as it turns out. The source is us. We fake-killed James Earl Jones, the same way we’ve fake-killed every other celebrity since the days of Netscape. We’re not merely part of the problem; we’re all of it.

The only source for Darth Vader’s voice reuniting with the Force was the Woodward-and-Bernstein-approved paragon of journalism called FeedNewz. But FeedNewz isn’t a fucking news site — its real name is prank.link, a content creator where any random asshole can plug anybody’s name into the generator and create a fake news story about them. When people clicked on the “James Earl Jones dies” link to learn how an 84-year-old man could possibly pass so suddenly, they got this instead:

“Also, his most famous line was ‘I quit on you when you cleared out of Detroit with Willie the Pimp‘ … from The Lion King.”

GET IT? You thought a thing happened, but it didn’t! Doesn’t that tickle-torture your ribs? Here’s another knee-slapper: Justin Bieber was raped and killed in Las Vegas … except he wasn’t! How gullible you must be, to think people die.

Don’t worry, David Caruso is on the case.

But if FakeNewz sounds too shady for your phony death needs, perhaps you’d prefer a website that sounds an awful lot like a legitimate one? FakeAWish.com will kill any celebrity you like and report it under the name “Global Associated News,” which is the biggest waste of an official-sounding name since Dr. Phil first called himself “Dr.” Then there’s MSMBC.co, where you create a fake death story (like this one for Arnold Schwarzenegger) complete with a link that looks exactly like MSNBC.com if you’re both blindly clicking on everything and actually blind. And when somebody clicks on it, they’re greeted not by a HAHA PWNED page, but a real-ish-looking news story that you can’t read until you share it with your distant uncle and that guy you haven’t talked to since college:

Or with no one, if you go with the Google+ option.

Alternatively, if using those sites is too much work, you can go with the absolute laziest option and create a “RIP [celebrity name]” Facebook page for someone who isn’t in fact RIPing … and then watch it grow inexplicably popular. Rowan “Johnny English” Atkinson, for example, has no fewer than two pre-posthumous Facebook pages, each with over 3,000 fans. For the sake of our species, we hope it’s simply the same 3,000 who fell for the same thing twice.

#2. Stop Pretending Everyone’s Offended By Movies

Hey, remember when those Native American actors walked off the set of Adam Sandler’s new movie? It seems they were outraged over all the gross inaccuracies, blatant stereotyping, lazy jokes, and other things that have never, ever been in an Adam Sandler movie.

“We thought we were signing up for something more sophisticated, like a male deodorant ad.”

Notice how none of those headlines mention how many actors walked off the set, implying through omission that the number was “all of them”? Well, they did that for a reason: The real situation was way less volatile (and thus, more boring) than the hate-click media reported. According to one of the actors, only four out of 154 actors walked out, plus one consultant, leaving the rest to feel “betrayed” that they were being painted as “sell-outs” to the White Man. Oh, and another actor says they all saw the script beforehand, so those who quit probably should have seen the terribleness coming, even if they haven’t been to a cinema since Big Daddy came out.

Precedent shows “pee-pee on your teepee” wasn’t going to be a metaphor.

Then there’s Mad Max: Fury Road and the supposed shitstorm it caused among Men’s Rights Activists for daring to include women kicking ass:

“Feminists started all the wars,” one anonymous member said.

Makes sense, right? Babies throw tantrums. MRAs are babies, so they’re throwing tantrums. Except they weren’t. This entire story came from one blog post on We Hunted The Mammoth, which centered around the anti-Furiosa furor on Return Of Kings, a site so viciously anti-woman even Al Bundy would yell at them to grow the fuck up. But RoK isn’t a MRA site — just some random cootiephobes — and nowhere on Mammoth does it confuse the two. Every other site, desperate for traffic, did that.

Misogynists want her to grow hair and make babies and sandwiches, while MRAs want her to stop destroying masculinity. And to grow hair and make babies and sandwiches.

Did legitimate Men’s Rights Assbags hate Fury Road? Sure, because vagina. But they’re not nearly smart enough to organize some massive boycott of a film $375 million worth of people saw anyway. Also, despite what leading MRA loudmouths fantasize about while jerking off with mini-tweezers, nobody was “paid to put [an MRA boycott story] in the press.” It was lazy and biased, adjectives with which MRAs should be plenty familiar. And finally, we have the time the Noah movie threw every Christian into a hateful tizzy:

That’s a lot of cheek not-turning.

A survey of over 5,000 people found a whopping 98 percent were tut-tutting the movie for bastardizing the Bible. One problem: That survey focused on “faith-driven consumers,” and was organized by an ultra-religious group called … FAITH DRIVEN CONSUMER. They urge boycotts of anything that disagrees with their interpretation of the Bible, and are the same company behind IStandWithPhil, a petition to reinstate that homophobic guy from Duck Dynasty. Even Family Feud surveys like “Name a body part that rhymes with ‘eenis'” aren’t that obviously slanted.

#1. Nope, That Actor Didn’t Confirm A Sequel To That Movie

You know how we’ve dumbed down “literally” and “irony” so morons can feel literate too? “I literally ate an entire pig yesterday, and ironically, I literally ate an entire pig today, too!” We’re doing that crap with “confirm” now. Where once it meant “official news from an official source,” it now means “anybody saying anything about anything.”

Like these constant breaking news stories about a celebrity “confirming” a sequel to some film, when it turns out all they really said was “yeah it’d be cool to do that maybe.” Recently, the Internet went bonkers over Keanu Reeves supposedly saying that Speed 3 was going to happen:

The biggest question now is: Which of the e’s will they replace with a 3?

But no, Speed 3 isn’t happening, for two reasons. Number one: Speed 2. Number two: Keanu was making a goddamn joke. Some reporter asked him about Speed 3, and he said, “Oh my god, Speed 3: Redemption. Sure. Jack Traven kind of like, dusting it off.” That’s sarcasm, folks — another term we’ve dumbed down because nobody can get it right.

Granted, it can be hard to tell with this guy.

Even SlashFilm admits (at the end, when everybody’s stopped reading) that this is probably a non-story, writing “I’m not sure I take the affirmative answer that seriously, but he said it and it’s our job to tell you what he said.” It’s also your job to cleverly edit your headlines so overexcited Speed demons click and share your gossip without a second thought, it would seem.

Ewan McGregor ran into this too, with headlines screaming about how he’d be down with doing Trainspotting 2, even though it’s absolutely not happening.

How old is the ceiling baby now, anyway?

Good God, three paragraphs in, the man admits “I’ve not seen a script yet and I don’t know if there is one.” And yet People reported this anyway. You might as well report on him debating whether to order pizza or Chinese food.

Even Beetlejuice 2 isn’t as done a deal as the headlines make it seem:

Michael Keaton better start practicing his surf moves.

This “confirmation” was her going on Seth Meyers and yammering, “Um, I think I can confirm it, because Tim Burton did this interview — like, it was very hush-hush, top secret … and then he was doing some press for Big Eyes and he did an on-camera interview and he said, ‘Oh yeah, we’re doing it and Winona’s going to be in it,’ and I was like [shocked face].”

And we were like [unimpressed face]. Until some studio gives us an official release date (like Universal recently did with Jurassic World 2), Beetlejuice 2: At Least Lydia’s Legal This Time is nothing but actors talking.

But boy do we love when actors talk — we’ll believe anything they say, even when it’s so obviously a stupid joke. Like Michael Shannon saying he would return as General Zod for Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice, but with flipper hands:

That’s almost as silly as the name of the movie.

Notice how none of those headlines say “flipper hands”? That’s because even the writers know it’s bollocks, but they still want to suck you in and get your clicks, so they tease you “new details” and “strange change.” Except according to Shannon himself, Zod is stone dead, he only appears via voiceover, and the flipper thing was him being a silly goose:

A Batman story starring a guy with flippers? That’s preposterous.

Welcome to the Internet, Shannon, where you can’t believe everything you read, except for that one thing you’re about to share with your buddies. That thing? Totally believable.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-hollywood-stories-you-see-everywhere-that-are-always-bs/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/182767620712

[allofbeercom]

5 Hollywood Stories You See Everywhere (That Are Always BS)

Entertainment sites are facing a serious problem: There’s a limited number of things that happen every day, but their readers will click on an infinite amount of articles, as long as someone or something vaguely famous is involved. The solution? Follow the grand Internet tradition of making shit up. Print a headline saying “Bill Murray killed and ate Miley Cyrus!” and watch as it gets 100,000 shares before either of their publicists can deny it.

Now, all of us have fallen for stories like these in the past, but there are some particularly egregious types of bullshit articles that should really be setting off our hogwash alarms by now. Starting with …

#5. Stop Saying The Simpsons Predicted Stuff

The Internet is 80 percent porn, 70 percent fanfic on Tumblr, and 90 percent inaccurate statistics. Whatever’s left is made out of bullshit listicles about how some old Simpsons episode predicted today’s events. Apparently, they foresaw Donald Trump: Angry Half-Chewed Orange Starburst For President 15 years before it happened:

They also predicted that Lisa would be an adult by 2010, so …

But before you go proclaiming Matt Groening “King of the Psychics,” consider this: That episode aired in 2000. Guess what lying, hypocritical moron announced he’d be running for President in 2000? No no, the other one. Yes, Trump said he’d run for President under the Reform Party in 2000 (and had been talking about it since 1987), meaning The Simpsons predicted precisely squat. And as far as them “predicting” that President Trump would destroy the country … duhhhh. That’s like predicting grass will be green, or that a diaper will be loaded with shit.

Can anthropomorphic loaded diapers even legally run for president?

And we do this all. The. Fucking. Time. Unless some fat yellow dude destroys an entire city by pressing the wrong button at the power plant, it’s no big deal if real life imitates The Simpsons. It’s a topical show with damn near 600 episodes under its quarter-century-old belt. Of course there’s going to be overlap with reality — which hasn’t stopped sites like BuzzFeed from marveling over the matter. Let’s review their mind-blowing discoveries:

So the Simpsons made an irradiated food joke, and now Japan’s got irradiated fruit? That’s not a new idea. If anything, the vegetation around Chernobyl predicted The Simpsons. Oh, and the deformed Japanese veggies were bullshit anyway. Off to a good start, BuzzFeed!

OK. So. In 2004, a bunch of Ohio voting machines glitched and accidentally gave George W. Bush 4,000 extra votes. In 2008, the Simpsons satirized that incident. In 2012, it happened again for real. And that’s supposed to be a score for Homer and friends how? Just because your memory was crippled by all those ’90s nostalgia GIF parades doesn’t mean that the past suddenly didn’t happen, BuzzFeed.

This is probably the closest one: They successfully predicted that somebody who works with wild animals would eventually get attacked by one. Impressive. What’s next, claiming that The Simpsons predicted baseball players playing softball?

DICK TRACY, YOU ASSHOLES! THE JETSONS! EVEN THE FUCKING FLINTSTONES! Somebody got paid for this list! You know what, we’re moving on before this gives us an aneurysm.

Arrrrghhh! Too late!

#4. People Need To Chill About Idris Elba Playing James Bond

Eventually, Daniel Craig will stop being James Bond. And despite the fact that he’s a totally outdated character, tradition dictates that we’ll need a new one. One of the top names being bandied about is Idris Elba, who deviates from the Bond norm in one glaringly obvious way …

“The world isn’t ready for a Bond with facial hair. Sorry.”

OK, there’s also the race thing, an issue which Bond novelist Anthony Horowitz dealt with in the worst possible way. In an interview with The Daily Mail, he claimed that Elba would suck as Bond because he’s “too street.” The Internet responded by figuratively painting Horowitz’s naked body gold and leaving him to asphyxiate.

Most were only scandalized to find out there are still Bond books, though (or books in general).

First off, this quote came from The Daily Mail, so rage-sharing it is like raging over something the bad guy said at WrestleMania. Even worse, all these headlines conveniently ignore where he named other black actors he’d prefer play Bond. Everybody’s focused on “too rough” and “too street,” while see-no-eviling the part where he recommended Hustle‘s Adrian Lester instead.

There’s still a race issue at play here, of course — but not in the overt, simplistic way that everybody seeing red took it as. It’s deciding that black actors, who have proven their ability to play both suave and rough with equal tenacity, should only be one thing. Horowitz is typecasting Elba as a rough, street black man, and Lester as a suave, classy black man, and won’t let them sit at each other’s table. And nobody’s talking about this except … The Huffington Post? Really? Dear Internet: When BuzzFeed-Minus-Cat-GIFs is the voice of reason, it might be time to pay attention and rethink things.

Both because they’re right on the money, and because it’ll probably never happen again.

Ex-Bond Roger Moore got in similar hot water recently, accused of opposing Elba Bond over blackness. Moore himself had to clarify that he only said Bond should be 100 percent “English-English” — his interviewer later edited it so it seemed like he was talking about Elba. But you know what? When Elba finally becomes Bond and blows everyone out of their seats, all this ridiculous talk of race, class, and who’s street and who’s not will disappear. Because it’s the performance that matters, not the-

Wait … it was all a rumor? He’s NOT going to be Bond? There were never even talks of him being Bond, nothing but Daniel Craig dream-casting off the top of his head? We got all worked up over that? FUCK.

#3. Every Celebrity Death Hoax Comes From The Same Source: Your Idiot Friends

The world lost the best/worst father in movie history last August when James Earl Jones sadly passed away, according to the Internet. The only person who didn’t hear the news was James Earl Jones, who is still tweeting like normal. Yeah, it was another celebrity death hoax. So what happened? What crapbag news site yellow-journalism’d a beloved celebrity to an early grave this time?

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooot dead yet, guys.”

None, as it turns out. The source is us. We fake-killed James Earl Jones, the same way we’ve fake-killed every other celebrity since the days of Netscape. We’re not merely part of the problem; we’re all of it.

The only source for Darth Vader’s voice reuniting with the Force was the Woodward-and-Bernstein-approved paragon of journalism called FeedNewz. But FeedNewz isn’t a fucking news site — its real name is prank.link, a content creator where any random asshole can plug anybody’s name into the generator and create a fake news story about them. When people clicked on the “James Earl Jones dies” link to learn how an 84-year-old man could possibly pass so suddenly, they got this instead:

“Also, his most famous line was ‘I quit on you when you cleared out of Detroit with Willie the Pimp‘ … from The Lion King.”

GET IT? You thought a thing happened, but it didn’t! Doesn’t that tickle-torture your ribs? Here’s another knee-slapper: Justin Bieber was raped and killed in Las Vegas … except he wasn’t! How gullible you must be, to think people die.

Don’t worry, David Caruso is on the case.

But if FakeNewz sounds too shady for your phony death needs, perhaps you’d prefer a website that sounds an awful lot like a legitimate one? FakeAWish.com will kill any celebrity you like and report it under the name “Global Associated News,” which is the biggest waste of an official-sounding name since Dr. Phil first called himself “Dr.” Then there’s MSMBC.co, where you create a fake death story (like this one for Arnold Schwarzenegger) complete with a link that looks exactly like MSNBC.com if you’re both blindly clicking on everything and actually blind. And when somebody clicks on it, they’re greeted not by a HAHA PWNED page, but a real-ish-looking news story that you can’t read until you share it with your distant uncle and that guy you haven’t talked to since college:

Or with no one, if you go with the Google+ option.

Alternatively, if using those sites is too much work, you can go with the absolute laziest option and create a “RIP [celebrity name]” Facebook page for someone who isn’t in fact RIPing … and then watch it grow inexplicably popular. Rowan “Johnny English” Atkinson, for example, has no fewer than two pre-posthumous Facebook pages, each with over 3,000 fans. For the sake of our species, we hope it’s simply the same 3,000 who fell for the same thing twice.

#2. Stop Pretending Everyone’s Offended By Movies

Hey, remember when those Native American actors walked off the set of Adam Sandler’s new movie? It seems they were outraged over all the gross inaccuracies, blatant stereotyping, lazy jokes, and other things that have never, ever been in an Adam Sandler movie.

“We thought we were signing up for something more sophisticated, like a male deodorant ad.”

Notice how none of those headlines mention how many actors walked off the set, implying through omission that the number was “all of them”? Well, they did that for a reason: The real situation was way less volatile (and thus, more boring) than the hate-click media reported. According to one of the actors, only four out of 154 actors walked out, plus one consultant, leaving the rest to feel “betrayed” that they were being painted as “sell-outs” to the White Man. Oh, and another actor says they all saw the script beforehand, so those who quit probably should have seen the terribleness coming, even if they haven’t been to a cinema since Big Daddy came out.

Precedent shows “pee-pee on your teepee” wasn’t going to be a metaphor.

Then there’s Mad Max: Fury Road and the supposed shitstorm it caused among Men’s Rights Activists for daring to include women kicking ass:

“Feminists started all the wars,” one anonymous member said.

Makes sense, right? Babies throw tantrums. MRAs are babies, so they’re throwing tantrums. Except they weren’t. This entire story came from one blog post on We Hunted The Mammoth, which centered around the anti-Furiosa furor on Return Of Kings, a site so viciously anti-woman even Al Bundy would yell at them to grow the fuck up. But RoK isn’t a MRA site — just some random cootiephobes — and nowhere on Mammoth does it confuse the two. Every other site, desperate for traffic, did that.

Misogynists want her to grow hair and make babies and sandwiches, while MRAs want her to stop destroying masculinity. And to grow hair and make babies and sandwiches.

Did legitimate Men’s Rights Assbags hate Fury Road? Sure, because vagina. But they’re not nearly smart enough to organize some massive boycott of a film $375 million worth of people saw anyway. Also, despite what leading MRA loudmouths fantasize about while jerking off with mini-tweezers, nobody was “paid to put [an MRA boycott story] in the press.” It was lazy and biased, adjectives with which MRAs should be plenty familiar. And finally, we have the time the Noah movie threw every Christian into a hateful tizzy:

That’s a lot of cheek not-turning.

A survey of over 5,000 people found a whopping 98 percent were tut-tutting the movie for bastardizing the Bible. One problem: That survey focused on “faith-driven consumers,” and was organized by an ultra-religious group called … FAITH DRIVEN CONSUMER. They urge boycotts of anything that disagrees with their interpretation of the Bible, and are the same company behind IStandWithPhil, a petition to reinstate that homophobic guy from Duck Dynasty. Even Family Feud surveys like “Name a body part that rhymes with ‘eenis'” aren’t that obviously slanted.

#1. Nope, That Actor Didn’t Confirm A Sequel To That Movie

You know how we’ve dumbed down “literally” and “irony” so morons can feel literate too? “I literally ate an entire pig yesterday, and ironically, I literally ate an entire pig today, too!” We’re doing that crap with “confirm” now. Where once it meant “official news from an official source,” it now means “anybody saying anything about anything.”

Like these constant breaking news stories about a celebrity “confirming” a sequel to some film, when it turns out all they really said was “yeah it’d be cool to do that maybe.” Recently, the Internet went bonkers over Keanu Reeves supposedly saying that Speed 3 was going to happen:

The biggest question now is: Which of the e’s will they replace with a 3?

But no, Speed 3 isn’t happening, for two reasons. Number one: Speed 2. Number two: Keanu was making a goddamn joke. Some reporter asked him about Speed 3, and he said, “Oh my god, Speed 3: Redemption. Sure. Jack Traven kind of like, dusting it off.” That’s sarcasm, folks — another term we’ve dumbed down because nobody can get it right.

Granted, it can be hard to tell with this guy.

Even SlashFilm admits (at the end, when everybody’s stopped reading) that this is probably a non-story, writing “I’m not sure I take the affirmative answer that seriously, but he said it and it’s our job to tell you what he said.” It’s also your job to cleverly edit your headlines so overexcited Speed demons click and share your gossip without a second thought, it would seem.

Ewan McGregor ran into this too, with headlines screaming about how he’d be down with doing Trainspotting 2, even though it’s absolutely not happening.

How old is the ceiling baby now, anyway?

Good God, three paragraphs in, the man admits “I’ve not seen a script yet and I don’t know if there is one.” And yet People reported this anyway. You might as well report on him debating whether to order pizza or Chinese food.

Even Beetlejuice 2 isn’t as done a deal as the headlines make it seem:

Michael Keaton better start practicing his surf moves.

This “confirmation” was her going on Seth Meyers and yammering, “Um, I think I can confirm it, because Tim Burton did this interview — like, it was very hush-hush, top secret … and then he was doing some press for Big Eyes and he did an on-camera interview and he said, ‘Oh yeah, we’re doing it and Winona’s going to be in it,’ and I was like [shocked face].”

And we were like [unimpressed face]. Until some studio gives us an official release date (like Universal recently did with Jurassic World 2), Beetlejuice 2: At Least Lydia’s Legal This Time is nothing but actors talking.

But boy do we love when actors talk — we’ll believe anything they say, even when it’s so obviously a stupid joke. Like Michael Shannon saying he would return as General Zod for Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice, but with flipper hands:

That’s almost as silly as the name of the movie.

Notice how none of those headlines say “flipper hands”? That’s because even the writers know it’s bollocks, but they still want to suck you in and get your clicks, so they tease you “new details” and “strange change.” Except according to Shannon himself, Zod is stone dead, he only appears via voiceover, and the flipper thing was him being a silly goose:

A Batman story starring a guy with flippers? That’s preposterous.

Welcome to the Internet, Shannon, where you can’t believe everything you read, except for that one thing you’re about to share with your buddies. That thing? Totally believable.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-hollywood-stories-you-see-everywhere-that-are-always-bs/