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Google Trends has been trippin’ for a while. For those of us who aren’t familiar with that particular division Google’s Internet empire, Google Trends allows users to see which search-terms are entered into the search engine most often on any given day. It comes in handy when people want to see what’s going on in the world, but lately it’s been used for evil, instead of good.

Some creative troublemakers have begun to use Google Trends to spread new, wacky and hurtful rumors about some of the web’s most popular celebrities. Ridiculous and intensely mean-spirited rumors are spread with the hopes that they are typed into Google to end up on Google Trends list of popular search-terms.

A couple of rumors have already been spread this way. Yesterday, “Lindsay Lohan Dead” was one of the site’s “Hot Searches”, but the young actress is clearly alive, kicking, and vying for a pass on her jail sentence by going to a sober house instead.

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Justin Bieber has been burned by the Google Trends Hoax on two, separate occasions. First, the phrase “Justin Bieber syphilis” was trending, and more recently, “Justin Bieber impregnates mom”.

Celebrity gossip is juicy, and it’s one of many people’s guilty pleasures, but completely fictitious and mean rumors only hurt, they don’t entertain. In short, don’t believe the ridiculous without doing some more digging. It’s how people get hurt.