A lot of people seem to think that I, The Fake Detective, spend my days going through Web sites looking for fake pictures.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  The only time I do that is when some web site operator asks me to check over a collection to help get rid of fakes, and that happens only about once a year.

To spend my days going through Web sites would be a very dull and boring task - far too boring for me.

In reality, I spend nearly all of my on-line time in UseNet, not on the Web.  The only time I go to the Web is to hunt for head shots or to do research.  Hunting for head shots on the Web sometimes does take a lot of my time, since there are often dozens of Web sites with hundreds of pictures for a given celebrity, but it's the primary way I find the "proof" I need to expose a fake.

If you don’t know the difference between UseNet and The World Wide Web, click HERE to go to Honest John’s web page for an explanation.

UseNet is where the newsgroups are.  Newsgroups are also called "discussion groups" because UseNet is where people discuss celebrity pictures - and just about everything else.

Unlike chat rooms, the pace is slower in newsgroups.  A message posted to a newsgroup may not be received by everyone viewing the group for six or twelve hours.  And their reply could take equally long to get back to you - although often ten or fifteen minutes is possible if both parties happen to be on-line at the same time and know how things work.  Discussion newsgroups are something like e-mail except that it isn’t person to person, it’s person to group.

Over the years, I’ve been in countless discussions with people on newsgroups.  When combined with my e-mail, it makes for a very large correspondence file.  That file is one of the items I’ve accumulated with the intention of writing a book.  (I’ve probably got enough material for a dozen books!)

What follows is a table of contents listing a few chapters from a proposed book - and links to those chapters.  The chapters are a good illustration of what happens on UseNet and how it differs from the Web.  It’s also a good illustration as to why the Internet is a never-ending joyful amazement to me.

The Fake Detective