Are stars really on MySpace, or are those fakes?

By: Katen, Geneva, Switzerland

A.B. Replies: Hey, I know that site! It's where all the cool kids go to, like, swap photos of sick skateboard grinds and troll in vain for snapshots of hot Argentine chicks who like Ghost in the Shell.

MySpace does, indeed, have real live celebrity members, along with the requisite splash banners and claims of exclusivity that often come with such deals--or as the company calls them, MySpace Specials. Most of those MySpace celebrity sites are considered authentic, though they're usually run by the star's music label or management. Just quit your weepin'. That's as real as you get here in the L.A. basin.

Just head on over to Madonna's official profile and hear her confess how she secretly likes to riffle through other people's handbags. Three milliseconds of audio and you know it's Madonna, all right; she makes ferreting through handbags sound not only legal but downright stylish. In fact, look for handbag riffling in her hot new video!

Think practically for just a moment. When you hit the MySpace Weezer site and immediately start to hear the boys' latest single in high-quality audio, and you note that the group has 287,595 friends and calls itself official, you can safely say the page you're viewing is that of the four alt gods.

Here's another source of comfort. MySpace has a mechanism by which the real Weezer can prevent poseurs from posing. The real Weezer can send something called a "salute"--an image of the band holding a handwritten sign saying "MySpace.com" and the user's ID number. Once the company gets that, it can boot the impostor.

MySpace embraces its users like a protective, albeit very cold and distant, cybermommy, and won't tell this B!tch much about individual A-list users. But here are some general guidelines to help you figure out if you've got a real live celebrity or not:

Does the person's user page list five friends or 56,901,883? Does the person, if he or she is a musician, offer high-quality audio?

Does MySpace have a huge banner on the front page crowing that it's nailed Madonna in an exclusive coup d'état of marketing ninjaship? Or are we talking about a girl who says she's Britney Spears but whose profile indicates she lives in the Philippines and whose hobbies include painting shiny teardrops on small wooden replicas of Our Lady of Perpetual Trauma?

Lastly, is there an angry Website out there from some real famous person, claiming that his MySpace doppelgänger is a fake? That's what happened earlier this month to an actor named Crispin Freeman. He looks kind of like Anakin Skywalker, and he voiced the role of Turnip Head in the English version of Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle.

Earlier this month, a fake Freeman logged on to MySpace claiming to be the real voice of Turnip Head. That person has since been obliterated from cyberspace, allowing the true Turnip Head to reign in peace. All hail you, Turnip Head, and may your otaku servants pile your throne high with gold and silver for Christmas.

Now, who wants to be my friend?