Awful Link of the Day

Awful Media

* The nude photos linked to in this ALotD are not of the actual celebrities, but they do contain actual nudity, so, NWS.

People who spend their time browsing for porny pictures of famous entertainers could be described, with extreme generosity, as "optimistic." They believe Natalie Portman would strip down Maxim-style -- despite having nothing to gain from this -- because they want to believe. The Fake Detective started dashing their dreams in 1996, when the World Wide Web was new and crazy and people didn't know what to think, like maybe the sentient "Internet" could seduce actresses and pop stars with its super-intelligence and then record their nakedness with its magic camera.

By 2007, computer users were relatively savvy about suspiciously splayed celebrities, and it seemed 70-year-old Ed "Fake Detective" Lake might be able to retire from serving as a kind of Snopes for willfully gullible masturbators. But in December 2009, he emerged from his lengthy hiatus to debunk an Amy Winehouse nude, because apparently there's a huge market for that sort of thing that needed to be nipped in the bud. And he has remained active in 2010, chivalrously defending the likes of Avril Lavigne. The Detective isn't awful, but the Photoshops sometimes are, and the kind words he lavishes upon those "beautiful fakes" contain more untruth than any image he's ever investigated.

- Andrew "Garbage Day" Miller