Digital Brainwaves

If you’re not familiar with it, Ask Yahoo! is a component of the Yahoo! web site that takes user-submitted questions, researches the answers, and posts one answer a day.

Today’s article seemed pretty straightforward: what’s the best-selling album ever?

Before we began our research, we thought Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” held the title. But, as we quickly learned, that’s not the case.

The high-flying Eagles are the real champs of the charts. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, “Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975″ by the Eagles is the best-selling album ever with 29 million copies sold. Jacko’s “Thriller” is second, followed by “Led Zeppelin IV,” Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” and AC/DC’s “Back in Black.”

I might not have even read the article, though if it weren’t for the text in the article’s RSS feed. As I’m looking through Google Reader, I come across this little gem:

Before we began researching, we thought Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” held the title. But, as we quickly learned, that’s not the case. Believe it or not, the best-selling album of all-time actually belongs to rap star and Mensa member Kevin Federline…

Waitwaitwait– WHAT???

Mensa… K-Fed… *brain explodes*

I have no idea how long this was live on the site; Google’s RSS reads are cached for a while, and the live feed has already removed the third sentence from the site:

Before we began researching, we thought Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” held the title. But, as we quickly learned, that’s not the case…

I wonder if anyone’s getting reprimanded, if not fired, for this one.