Like the Timex Social Club, I spend a lot of time lamenting the rumors that surround me every day. How do they get started? And where do they get crazy? In Truthmongerer, I’ll try to suss out the kernels of truth in the rumors that are taking up airspace in gossip columns, blogs, and our tips inbox.

THE RUMOR: News Corp is signing 50 Cent and the rest of his G-Unit posse to a $300 million deal that includes “a large stake in every aspect of 50’s businesses,” 50 signing to MySpace Records, a G-Unit book deal with HarperCollins, and Curtis becoming one of the media company’s largest shareholders.

TRUTH THRESHOLD: 20%.

LIKELY TRUTHS: I dunno, maybe Lloyd Banks is playing a MySpace secret show sometime soon? Or 50 called in a favor for some tickets to the American Idol finale?

LIKELY FALSEHOODS When I heard that 50 Cent’s official site, ThisIs50.com, was the source of the 50/News Corp rumor, my first thought was, “That seems a little gratuitously self-promotional, even for Curtis.” (Well, OK, that was actually my second thought after “So this is Uncle Rupe’s big bounceback after losing out on Newsday, huh? Someone’s feeling a bit emasculated!”) But as it turns out, the “sourcing” was merely the result of ThisIs50 Hoovering up the RSS feed of the ever-reliable MediaTakeOut, then repurposing it for page-filling-out purposes. Good old Internet content, always circling its own drain. Anyway, file this one under “probably not even vaguely true,” especially since, well, do you think that Bill O’Reilly would let this stand?

50 Cent Reportedly In Talks For $300 Million Deal [HipHopDX]