So read on at your own risk, because some of you are about to find out there's no Santa Claus.

Creators of internet videos realize this, and in the last few years we've seen the rise of the staged viral video, regular people faking some spontaneous bit of hilarity to make sure grandmas everywhere will be emailing the link for years. Well at Cracked, the truth still matters. Today we're taking a stand and saying, "Fuck you, Grandma. That shit was staged."

What's funnier than Homer Simpson getting hit in the face with a shovel? A real person getting hit with a shovel, of course.

7 Pauly Shore Punched Out On Stage

Behold as Pauly Shore, now working the stand-up comedy circuit in Texas so he doesn't have to live in his car, badgers a redneck heckler. The man takes the stage, punches Shore right in his annoying face, and a viral sensation is born:

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

This clip showed up in November of '06, got linked on Defamer and then hosted on every site in the world capable of hosting video. Across those sites the clip saw at least two million views and more than a thousand user comments. Fierce online debates raged as observers were forced to side with the violent hick or The Weasel, which is like being forced to pick whether you want to be stabbed in the left testicle or the right.

Sample comments:

"The people in the crowd as well as the guy who went up are nutfuckers. Thats just fucked up."

"lol. sweet justice"

"Gee Pauly what did you expect in Wacko, Texas? It's where men are men and the sheep are nervous. These people have sex with barn yard animals and think that it is OK. Pauly, truly your movies mostly suck big time except Encino Man, which was pretty funny, thanks mainly to Brandon Frazier."

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

The Evidence:

Frame-by-frame examination of whether or not the punch actually landed doesn't help, with the dark stage and shitty quality.



Above: blob

The fact that no charges were filed was also meaningless, since many legal experts say beating Pauly Shore is not technically a crime.

The cynics among us were undeterred. The fact that this video turned up barely a week after the Michael Richards racist fiasco made us wonder if a publicity-starved Shore wasn't playing the internet like the Machiavellian genius he so clearly is.

Sure enough, a couple of weeks after the video made its way around the net, TMZ.com called the cops in Odessa and asked them about it. They confirmed the whole thing had been set up. Finally, in January Pauly Shore himself uploaded a video with the behind-the-scenes rehearsal of the incident:

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

The trouble is that as of this writing, that video had only been viewed about 75,000 times, a tiny fraction of the people who enjoyed the original punch. Once again mankind rejects reality to cling to a happier fantasy.