Rest Easy.

Come On, There Was Never A Serial Booty-Tickling Bandit On The Loose In Dallas.

Recently, our social media feeds have been inundated with a seemingly realistic-looking screen-cap of a news report about a Dallas man who has been arrested after going on a serial asshole-fingering spree.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you probably will soon. It’s getting shared like crazy. Thing is, the story is completely, 100 percent fake. Reads the “news” story getting erroneously passed around:

TEXAS — The infamous “B*oty Tickler” who was breaking into homes in Dallas and tickling peoples but*holes while they were sleeping has finally been captured. The so called “B*oty tickler” hit several homes and targeted at least a dozen people before being arrested. His best cover is the element of surprise people believed he was a harmless homeless man but after being captured it was discovered he wasn’t homeless but was wearing “Yezzus” brand clothing that is estimated to be worth over $4,500.

All of the break-ins happened overnight and people were so scared they started sleeping on their back. We spoke we Richard Nays who lives near 3 of the “B*oty ticklers” victims homes and he told us “Fam I slept on my back everyday, I can finally sleep on my stomach again.” Police say they were able to identify him and arrested him today at 5 a.m. All of the tickler’s victims were men. He is currently being held in Dallas County with no bond.

As if the misspellings of “Yeezus” and “every day” weren’t enough to give one pause as to the writer’s credibility, the obviously fabricated quote about the guy sleeping on his back for a week should have at least sent up a few red flags. Still, on the whole, it didn’t sound that much more absurd than the actually true stories that pop up on more reputable “weird news” sites like this Huffington Post blog, we concede.

But, alas, if anyone is going around tickling the butts of unsuspecting Dallasites, they certainly haven’t been caught yet. This wholly falsified tale was first published on notallowedto.com, a site whose own terms and conditions page states that it “make[s] no representation as to the completeness, accuracy or currency of any information on this Web Site.”

That makes it pretty plain, huh?

Along with sites like National Report (“America’s #1 Independent News Source”), World News Daily Report (“News You Can Trust!”), Huzlers (“Breaking News & Urban Entertainment”) and Empire News, Not Allowed To is just another of the growing list of “sources” posting wild “news” stories that wind up getting passed around on Facebook as if they were actually legit. Make no mistake: They are absolutely not legit. Chalk this up to the troubling fact that most of the friends commenting on that link you posted to your feed never actually clicked through to read the story.

Headlines, these days, are indeed everything.

To wit: This is not the first time Not Allowed To has put one over on the masses. Last year, a couple of its fake posts went similarly viral, including one appeared to show a McDonald’s sign explaining that the restaurant used French fry grease in its coffee to speed up the heating process. Another one claimed that 10,000 Americans signed a petition to replace the U.S. flag with a gay pride flag. Of course, neither of those are true.

Anyway: Sleep easy tonight, folks. There is not — and there never was — a booty tickling bandit on the loose in Dallas.

Next time, maybe check out Snopes, Gawker’s Antiviral blog or this list of hoax sites before you resort to laying on your back for a week.