Yelp Lawsuit Against 'South Park' Makes News — But It Isn't Real

An episode of South Park called "You're Not Yelping," which aired on October 14, poked fun at Yelpers, depicting them as arrogant and self-important. ("I told him who I am. I'm a Yelp reviewer.")

It was all the usual clever, scatological, off-the-wall South Park stuff — but according to stories on October 20 sourced from "NBC," according to Google, the popular user-review site was suing the show, which airs on Comedy Central, for $10 million, with a Yelp spokesman supposedly saying "The South Park episode was in extremely bad taste and not funny whatsoever," adding that the association of Yelpers with terrorists on the show was "not only cruel, but the definition of libel and slander."

Unfortunately, the story about Yelp suing the show for the parody was itself a parody. The story came not from nbc.com but from nbc.com.co, a site out of Australia. Yelp immediately denied the story, even tweeting that "We have no interest in legal action against the fantastic team that makes the South Park magic happen."

A Google search for "Yelp sues South Park" late this afternoon returns results identifying the lawsuit as false — but still lists the original nbc.com.co story as its number two "In the news" result.