Threat Level: Nonexistant

Hey Germany, isn’t it the other way around? First you say that a real event never happened. Now you’re convinced that a hoax actually happened? Just how do we apply the “Fool me once” formula to your country?

Act 1: The German media is informed by an alleged reporter of a local American TV station based in the city of Bluewater, California, about a suicide bombing in a local restaurant. The media, trying to verify the story, checked the city’s official website and the TV station’s website to find numbers of the local police and fire department, which promptly confirmed that two explosions had occurred in a restaurant. So German media proceeded to report a suicide bombing in the USA.

Act 2: The story was partly revoked. Now it was three German rappers, named the “Berlin Boys”, who had staged a fake suicide bombing with fake bomb props in an attempt to seek publicity. The TV station’s website featured a news report about the arrest of the Germans.

Act 3: Eventually it was revealed that the “Berlin Boys” don’t exist. Neither was anyone arrested. Nor did the TV station exist. And neither does a Californian city named “Bluewater” exists. Still, police officials in San Bernardino received a lot of phone calls from German media seeking to verify the story.

The Troofiness: It was all one giant publicity stunt by the director of an upcoming German movie named Short Cut to Hollywood, which is about three German rappers who stage a fake bombing in the USA to get publicity. The director reportedly wanted to find out if something like that could actually happen in real life. To do so, he set up fake websites for the (fake) city of Bluewater and the fake TV station, with fake phone numbers on the sites that would redirect callers to the Skype accounts of participants in the stunt. Even fake Wikipedia entries were set up that would verify the existence of the city and the TV station, with links to the “official” websites.

Germany has officially been served. Or punked. You know, whichever silly descriptor that the kids are using these days.