Jacko’s Backo?

In an experiment to show how quickly misinformation and conspiracy theories can spread across the Internet, German broadcaster RTL posted on YouTube last week a video that appears to be Michael Jackson emerging from a coroners van.

“We wanted to show how easily users can be manipulated on the Internet with hoax videos,” spokeswoman Heike Schultz of Cologne-based RTL told The Associated Press. “Therefore, we created this video of Michael Jackson being alive, even though everybody knows by now that he is dead — and the response was breathtaking.”

Jackson died in Los Angeles June 25.

The poorly lit video shows what appears to be the King of Pop emerging from a coroners van inside of a gated parking garage with another person.

Although the video was only posted for one day, it received 880,000 hits.