In a world where, on any given day, someone is forwarding that email that says Bill Gates will share his Microsoft fortune with you, is it really that hard to believe Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o had no clue that dead “girlfriend” Lennay Kekua — whom he allegedly knew only from the Internet — didn’t really exist?

That Microsoft free-money hoax has been circulating cyberspace since at least 1997, yet humanity’s Fox Mulder-like willingness to believe the most ridiculously obvious bucket of horse hockey isn’t to be discounted.

And as P.T. Barnum reminded us long before the Internet existed, there are plenty of other people willing to fill the needs of such victims … and an even larger audience ready to bathe in the sweet sweet Schadenfreude that results. It doesn’t even matter, as in this case, whether we believe anybody really fell for the hoax or not.

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