geekosystem

Tiger Woods Cigar Guy's true identity has been revealed: No, he's not Sacha Baron Cohen. The Daily Mail, whose remarkable photo of Tiger Woods’ golf ball milliseconds before it smashed into a photographer’s camera at the Ryder Cup last week made a mustached, cigar-chomping guy a worldwide star, did some admirable sleuthwork and tracked the man down: His name is Rupesh Shingadia, and he is a 30-year-old investment analyst in London. Shingadia, who is familiar with his viral online fame and says that "never in a million years could I have expected anything like this," explains his costume:

We still don't know the identity of the cigar-chomping guy with a mustache whose face launched a thousand Photoshop spoofs after he was spotted incongruously watching Tiger Woods whack a golf ball into a camera at the Ryder Cup. A new photo taken from a different angle (above) shows that his supposed 'turban' is actually a red ponytail wig, though, (h/t Urlesque) which some see as furthering the theory that Cigar Guy is in costume to honor/poke fun at Spanish golfer Miguel Angel Jimenez. But now, there's a new theory kicking around about Cigar Guy's identity: He's actually comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, of Ali G/Borat fame, hard at work on a new, sports-obsessed character named Afzal, a "muslim pansexual transvestite sports professional."

This photo of Tiger Woods' golf ball milliseconds before it smashed into a photographer's camera at the Ryder Cup this past weekend is basically everywhere on the Internet today on account of its being unbelievable but very much real. What happens when it gets the Sameface treatment?

Yesterday, Tiger Woods ex-paramour Joslyn James released a transcript of her text messages from the lust-addled golfer. Being the egregious nerds that we are, we looked at this cesspit of lurid language and explicit sexytalk and saw only one thing...

...beauteous, beauteous data!

Click below to see a tag cloud of the most common words in Tiger's sexts, generated thanks to the magic of Wordle.

So: Remember the patently insane machinima video describing the whole Tiger Woods affair? And how the Internet came together and laughed at it, because, wow, it looked like someone was using The Sims 3 to report the news? And how all the stars of America's celebrity firmament tumbled directly into the Uncanny Valley? Well, after Tiger Woods' press conference today, we now know that that the video's portrayal of marital fisticuffs was false. Who knew that weird Chinese tabloid videos are not to be trusted?

Tiger Woods' press conference explaining his infidelity will be beginning any minute on YouTube. It's scheduled to start at 11am EST. You can watch it here.

Update: It has begun. Ustream video after the jump:

Well, that's a relief! According to the president of EA Sports, the inexhaustible Tiger Woods scandal (seriously, it's been two months) hasn't put a damper on the sales of Tiger Woods-branded games.