How The “Weezy And Zac Sittin’ In A Tree” Rumor Became Today’s Biggest Rumor In The World

Artists: Lil Wayne/Zac Efron. Rumor: The two of them are not only collaborating on a High School Musical remix album, they’re totally making out. And Weezy’s rubbed off so much on Zac, the Disney-bred cutie is dropping the N-bomb! First Mention: The OC Weekly printed “The Efron Scandal,” which made these claims, on Thursday, and author Ben Westhoff tipped us off to the story Friday. But we didn’t run it, because it was pretty freaking obvious that it was a goof. Take this sentence: “‘I’m just being me,’ Wayne insists, leading a tour of his recently purchased oceanfront house, which features a faux-bronze statue of his own nude figure, and a Juicy Fruit-dispensing bathroom attendant who lives on the premises full-time.” I mean, in ninth grade I fell for the old “gullible isn’t in the dictionary” joke and even I realized this was someone having a 675-word laugh.

The Build-Up: Radar picked it up–nice Photoshopping there, guys!–yesterday afternoon, and they even fell for the “Juicy Fruit-dispensing bathroom attendant” detail. The Dam Break: Perez ran with it last night, and since then, it’s been showing up in my RSS feed all over the freakin’ place. Odds Of Truthfulness: Zero. The OC Weekly, no doubt waiting for a call from Efron’s legal team, is in full-on damage control mode, sending “it’s a joke!!” e-mails to Perezzers and Radar. And so, we are just left to wonder one thing (aside from whether Lil’ Wayne does, in fact, have a remix of “What Time Is It” in his vaults somewhere): Is satire dead? And if so, who killed it: Sorta clumsy writers? Nuance-challenged bloggers? Cribs? Or do we all have blood on our desperate-for-“Zac Efron”-related-Google-hits hands?

The Efron Scandal [OC Weekly] [Zac Efron photo via Getty]