• Make up a story about the death of a celebrity. Any celebrity.
• Make up a story about Apple (AAPL). Any story.
• Make up a story about Conan O’Brien and get the crowd at a Digg event to pass it along for you.

We saw the last one in action Saturday night at a South by Southwest event, when pranksters cooked up a stupid story about the unemployed talk show host, designed in part to promote a Web video studio.

This one didn’t get picked up by the mainstream press, but it did find plenty of takers for a while on Twitter.

CNET’s Daniel Terdiman, who happily participated in the hoax, describes it in great detail here. If you want the short version, here’s a video of the event’s genesis, provided by David Spark. Pretty simple stuff: Anyone can do it.

[Image credit: LiveFromAmsterdam]

I am talking quickly since it was a “speed-Q&A” session, where five of us moved from table to table and quickly answered questions shot at us from the people gathered at each.

They were split into like-minded groups–developers, designers, business types.

This video was shot on a Flip camera, the kind BoomTown uses for our own riveting videos, by tech writer David Spark.

Excuse the mysterious Ray-Ban look–the shades are prescription and I left my regular glasses at home. (Also, I was trying to avoid intimacy in this speed Q&A thing!)

Here Spark is asking me about my bête noire in the Web 2.0 space–lack of specifics about monetization.

I always get annoyed by the same stock explanation from entrepreneurs when I ask about it: “Advertising, of course.” But when I then ask for more detail and actual results, that’s where things always get a little fuzzy.

I also talk about the need for Web 2.0 wunderkinds to be scrutinized just the same as any business leader, rather than worshipped by a slavish press.

Hence, my rant: