Watch this video---more than six million other people did, and they probably thought the same thing you will after you see it:

        OMIGOD!!    If cellphones do that to mere popcorn kernels, what then of my pituitary gland?!?     Will it, too, turn into just another freshly cooked morsel, to be served with salt and melted butter?

       Naw.

       What you've just seen is part of an ongoing internet trend--supposedly "authentic" web videos that are really nothing more than Madison Avenue come-ons.      About the video you watched above, Slate writes, "...on June 12, a wireless headset manufacturer called Cardo Systems announced that it had commissioned the videos.Special effects, not cell phones, had popped the popcorn. CEO Abraham Glezerman told CNN that the company had never meant to scare people into buying more headsets—which some neurosurgeons recommend to reduce exposure to cell-phone radiation. Rather, Cardo just wanted to convince viewers to send the clips to their friends. He insisted, "The truth is that it was funny!"

       There's this clip, downloaded some five million times:

        ...just some Russian film maker and blogger punkin' the west.

         There's the guys back-flippin' into their jeans, and Kobe Bryant leaping the Astin-Martin.      All viral.    All ads.

         We want to believe--there's that feeling that the traditional media shield us from things, and that the web is the only true source of unfiltered information.      Like the girl at the minor league ballgame...

Office Worker Goes Absolutely Insane - Watch more free videos

          Very cool.    Very fake.

         Here's the whole Slate story...