Subway's 'Jared Fogel's' death hoaxed. Digg shovels dirt on grave

Jared Fogle, center, along with E!'s Joel McHale, left, and Eddie Mata. (Photo: PR NEWSWIRE)

Poor Jared Fogle the Subway Weight Loss Guy. 

After years of force-feeding himself thousands of turkey sandwiches on wheat, hold the flavor, all he gets is a nasty, virulent death. 

What a rip!

The death is a fake, of course, but that doesn't seem to have stopped the reports  from spreading like light mayonnaise across the digital by-ways.

Fogle's name is currently one of the top ten hottest search terms on Google Hot Trends, and messages lamenting his untimely passing have been tearing up Twitter all day -- even Digg founder Kevin Rose swallowed the bait, and sent word to all 46,000 of his followers.

"A friend sent me the link, and it just seemed too obscure to not be true," Rose told us in an e-mail. "My fault."

The site Rose broadcasted was Jaredremembered.com, an amazingly detailed phony memorial to Fogle. Here's part of the death announcement posted there (and nowhere else online). Notice that it's not dated--all it says is "yesterday"--so it could apply perfectly well to today, tomorrow or whenever people first notice it:

Jared S. Fogel, best known as the spokesman for Subway sandwich shop "The Subway Guy" Born December 1st, 1977 – Died yesterday at 4:43pm EST. The autopsy has not been performed, early medical reports indicate that he has died due to abnormal abdominal adhesions resulting from his 1998 gastric bypass surgery.

There is no link to these non-existent "early medical reports," nor a mention of the hospital's name, and of course, if you didn't look too closely, you might miss the hilarious hint that this diet and exercise icon actually lost weight (and then died) from having his stomach stapled.

It also doesn't add credibility that the site's owners spell his name wrong in both the obituary and the name of the site itself. I contacted the proprietors of the site to ask them why they singled out Fogle for this kind of elaborate hoax. 

"To go viral, it can't be an a-lister," an anonymous site admin replied. "It has to be someone people recognize and know ... yet at the same time think they might have missed it in the news, or believe it's possible to have missed it in the news. It wasn't anything personal against Jared."

I'm sure Jared's cool with it -- nothing like his own weight loss-related death to draw attention to his 10th annual "Tour de Pants," a national tour he conducts to raise awareness about childhood obesity.

OH YEAH, AND: I forgot to mention that this isn't the first time Fogle's death has been rumored.  Snopes.com has a page debunking a version of the hoax from last August.  But JaredRemembered.com was created in March.  Apparently, Jared is an attractive hoax target.  Watch out, Fogle, or you'll be sucked into memehood never to escape!

Reporting contributed by Mark Milian

Comments

[Ryan]

In other news today, Gerald Ford dies after being struck by a Nerf golf ball.

[Lenny]

Please be aware that using the word "gyp" is akin to using the slur "jewed". It's an offensive stererotype derived from Gypsy. The LA Times would never use the latter slur, they should not use the former.

[David Sarno]

Thanks Lenny, I've changed the offending word to "rip."

[Doc B]

Good to see the Times reporting this. And kudos for spelling Fogle's name correctly -- which the scam site doesn't do (and neither does the Huffington Post, which is a favorite "news" source of many people on Digg).

[Rob]

Is that Ryan Seacrest hanging out of the pocket of those pants?

[Buhler]

Nicely spotted, man.

[Karen Steward]

For the many people who suffer from abdominal adhesions or have lost years of their life due to this medical malady, this article is anything but funny. However, since it is best to look on the bright side of life, perhaps Jared's faked death will help bring awareness to the plight and very dismal world of the adhesion sufferer.

Adhesions are known to develop in 93% of people who undergo major abdominal or pelvic surgery with 53% of those people developing health related complications at some point in their lives due to adhesion formation. Adhesions can cause the internal organs to become fused together, leaving the victim to suffer incredible pain--often agony--while searching in vain for a doctor who will diagnose the CORRECT ailment that is going on in his or her body. On the average, a person will suffer 7-10 years before learning that they are actually suffering from adhesion formation. And yes, gastric bypass surgery, as any surgery, can result in adhesion formation that can be severe, even life-altering, in some cases.

Adhesion sufferers lives are often swallowed up--lost in a world of pain--which costs them everything: jobs, friends and often, even family. Adding insult to injury is the fact that adhesions elude the eye of standard medical tests (x-rays, scans, MRI's, etc), leaving many doctors to misdiagnose a patient or, worse yet, diagnose those who suffer as 'depressed' individuals; totally ignoring the fact that the patient's pain is REAL.

Adhesions, foremost known among the medical world as an iatrogenic disorder, is an illness that is a hot topic among physicians but one that is often shrouded in silence when a doctor meets with a patient who presents with all the "symptoms" of adhesion related disorder. Simply put: most doctors do not want to deal with an adhesion sufferer, thus a diagnosis of "depression" can also be a ploy by which the physician can be assured that he (she) has washed his (her) hands of this problematic patient (condition). For the adhesion sufferer, perhaps the only thing more devastating than living in horrid pain is meeting the many physicians whose quick analysis of her (his) condition is: psychosomatic illness. Unfortunately for the adhesion sufferer, the written prescription for an antidepressant can be used as "depression discharge" papers. This insulting and devastating ploy frees the doctor from the dreaded ailment/patient--an effective means to push the sufferer out the door. For the adhesion sufferer, the depression discharge papers puts in motion the tiresome journey of going from one doctor to the next; thus years of quality life are lost to adhesion related disorder (ARD). Karen Steward, author of the book, Doctors: Bound By Secrecy? Victims: Bound By Pain!

[Jared Blows]

Jared is bogus. He never approached Subway until LONG AFTER HAVING LOST THE WEIGHT!! No proof that he ever ate at Subways even once, never mind twice a day during his weight loss.