But if you look up PH417 online, there’s startlingly little information about it. Here’s what you will find:

4 sports-related photos from Getty Images labeled “PH417”;

Photos of a historic “skull dagger” made by a Philippine revolutionary society called Katipunan from the late 19th century;

A course called “PH417: Global Women's Health Issues” taught at California State University, Monterey Bay;

A rental listing for a three-bedroom “cozy townhouse in Pasig City near Sandoval PH417” in the Philippines;

An eBay listing for a $12.82 pre-owned landline telephone with “big buttons”;

A YouTube video made by a college student called “PH 417: Cerebral Vasculitis Presentation”;

A course called “PH417: Nuclear Radiation Measurements” taught at the Department of Physics at Michigan Technological University.

What you won’t find is any information that links PH417 to smoking bed bugs.

That’s because the newscast that mentions PH417 — and the so-called bed bug smoking epidemic — was a hoax. The fact that the video was posted around April Fool’s Day should have tipped people off, as well as the fact that it was posted by John Cain, a video creator with a YouTube channel called “The Real FHRITP,” which stands for “Fuck Her Right In The Pussy.”

But many people still fell for it. The video was posted on numerous sites, triggering a series of false news reports and online forum discussions. Through clever video editing skills, voice-over narration, spliced together footage of previous newscasts, and the use of made-up terms (like PH417), Cain was able to promulgate the idea that people are smoking bed bugs despite the fact that it is obviously a really bad idea.

“Very well done by the guy that created the video. It has absolutely blown up and gone viral,” Watson explained in a post-hoax YouTube video. The original smoking bed bugs newscast includes segments of him from a 2013 interview with ABC 15 in which he spoke about the dangers of dabbing butane hash oil.