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Once again, the knives are out for a suspected YouTube fraud. The object of scrutiny this time is a 15-year-old boy with short greasy hair and big braces, so tortured in his mannerisms that he can hardly articulate himself. He goes by the Internet nickname of "Daxflame," though his mother can be heard yelling at him from off camera, calling him "Bernice."

The boy seems to be having troubles. His life, as he tells it to the camera, is a string of small defeats and smaller victories. His desperate, almost ardent, quest to secure the friendship of a classmate was buoyed when the classmate borrowed a pencil. A passing smile from his would-be belle, Sophia, on whom he has endless designs, was a sign of true love. Getting hit in the face with her purse, not so much.

It's ridiculous, but Daxflame wouldn't be the only person to have lived through that ridiculous stage of life. He's the perfect anti-hero. Bouncing between rage and boundless optimism, he never allows that he might be the author of his own misfortune. Not when he wears a Superman suit to school a week before the real dress-up "Celebrity Friday," and not when he covers his face with Scotch tape as a joke for a diary segment, without realizing that taking it off would hurt. If you took all the agony of being unpopular and 15, compressed it into a nervous frame and boiled it till it was ready to burst, you'd have Daxflame.

Apparently, that's an agony with some resonance. As of this writing, his series of more than 50 clips has gained him the 36th most subscribers of anyone on YouTube, which is no mean feat. His diary entries are usually watched by more than 50,000 people, and every time he posts a video, more than 1,000 public comments appear in response.

So is he for real, or isn't he? He's either a brilliant performer or a troubled soul, but you just never know these days. Just a few months ago, we were dragged through the saga of "LonelyGirl15," a doe-eyed webcam diarist who gained a rapt following before turning out to be neither 15 nor lonely, scripted as she was by producers on the make.

Then there was the much-publicized "Bridezilla" video that showed a bride having a premarital breakdown. After days of burning up newspaper acreage with speculation, she turned out to be a viral advertisement for a company that didn't have enough to do with bridal meltdowns for the mental association to stick. At a recent technology conference, a show of hands was asked to see who remembered who the advertiser was; virtually no one did, and that includes me. I could look it up, but just on principle, I won't.

Now here we go again, ogling another Internet meltdown and wondering if anyone, even a desperate 15-year-old, would keep posting such self-incriminating videos. I have my doubts, but rest assured that the keenest minds of the Internet are on the case, descending on the question like a mob of teenage Sherlock Hemlocks with webcams instead of magnifying glasses.

Some have speculated that "Daxflame" is really a young improv actor connected to a family that specializes in children's talent. A few debunkings have been issued, though none of them have led to a confession.

Despite growing suspicion, the boy continues to post videos prolifically, either venting his tortured soul or acting his little heart out, hoping that the media will cotton on before he gets exposed. (In which case, hello there.)

But this is all beside the point. I'd rather enjoy the ambiguity while it lasts. Aren't the question marks that hover over these things part of the fun? Daxflame's authenticity is a talking point, the kind of thing you can bat around with friends or mull over for yourself.

The possibility that an online diary might be a fraud is just another layer of intrigue. After all, the "fake-or-not" game is a part and parcel of looking at anything online.

It's the Wikipedia effect: Everything is probably true, unless it isn't. It would be nice to believe that growing up in this kind of media environment would lead to a generation of skeptical viewers, eager to question every truth presented to them, and to ask how and why it got there.

More likely, it will lead to a generation of viewers who will be so used to getting bamboozled, they'll think nothing of it. These days, a good media fraud like LonelyGirl15 or Bridezilla isn't shunned after its outing; instead, its creators are rewarded with a tour of the interview circuit. (Just ask James Frey.) Once upon a time, fraud and entertainment might have seemed antithetical, but lately we've been busy turning fraud itself into the entertainment mainstream.

We're living in a state of perpetual uncertainty about everything we see and hear, and I think we're beginning to enjoy it. It's part of the spectacle, part of our daily diet of infotainment. We're going to come out jaded toward anything claiming to be true, but never galled by deception. Slowly but surely, everything will sink into the same grey zone of suspicion and resignation. Is Daxflame a fake? I'd like to know, but I think the point is already moot.

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Quick clicks

THE FUTURE THAT WASN'T
Speaking of fakes, remember the joy of reading old issues of Popular Mechanics, the magazine with visions of the future so grandiosely silly, you wondered if they would ever put an issue to bed with a straight face? Point your electro-magnetic tele-image-viewer to paleo-future.blogspot.com for an ongoing look into the future that never was. Drawing on printed materials from as far back as the 1890s, Paleo Future brings us roofed cities, giant fighting robots (controlled by wireless!) and the high-tech kitchens that were going to liberate the housewives of the year 1999. Take off your jetpack and enjoy.

THE TRUTH IS, WELL, SOMEWHERE ELSE
In the early hours of April 29, a tanker truck crashed and exploded beneath an overpass in Oakland, Calif. The driver escaped, but the conflagration melted the steel girders above, and the highway collapsed. The tanker had been speeding, and overturned - at least, that's the official story. Deftly sending up the 9/11 conspiracy theorists who run rampant on the Web, the truth-seekers at 4/29truth.com argue that this was actually a missile attack by some of San Francisco's liberal elements. "The "crash" occurred at 3:45 a.m. -- when, suspiciously, there are no witnesses," the site argues, later adding: ""G-A-Y" is spelled "429{inch} on a standard American telephone. The attacks occurred only 8.5 miles from the notorious Castro Street homosexual district. Coincidence?"

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