If you follow the gossip sites — shut up; I know you do — you may have heard the story about Paris Hilton giving away diamonds, which was of course gobbled up by all the celeb outlets.

Turns it, the whole thing was staged as part of Ashton Kutcher’s new project, a sort of meta-media version of Punk’d designed with the celeb-focussed media, not celebs themselves, as the butt of the joke:

Pop Fiction, an eight-episode series, is a prank show targeting paparazzi and gullible media outlets. It’s made with the eager help of stars, who were the laughing stocks of Kutcher’s former MTV show. This time the shoe’s on the other foot, and the series has been kept so tightly under wraps that E!’s own website fell victim to the Hilton hoax and other planted stories that producers won’t yet divulge.

It’s really, really hard not to like this idea a whole lot.