American Idol contestant Sanjaya Malakar, who captured America's imagination with his barely above Karaoke night vocal stylings and his constantly changing mop of hair, is claiming he is a fake.

In a video sent to gossip site TMZ.com, the adorable lil' fella is claiming that he is actually a student in Industrial Design at RISD. His name is Bill Vendall, and his whole American Idol stint was a perfomance art piece symbolic of "the self-referencing nature of progressive evolution"

TheFeed loves a good hoax as much as the next blog, but this one kind of sucks. We spent over 45 seconds examining the evidence have determined that there is no Bill Vendall and Sanjaya is not telling the truth. Here's our evidence:

1. Beseiged with scandals in the past, American Idol  does pretty extensive background checks on contestants. There's no way such an obvious ruse go undiscovered.
2. There is no google reference for "Bill Vendall."
3. Sanjaya/Vendall describes his Idol appearances as a "symbol of the self-referencing nature of progressive evolution" which isn't a phrase that makes any sense; it sounds like the kind of thing a dumb person would say when he's pretending to be smart.
4. Sanjaya is as mediocre an actor as he is a singer. His accent changes constantly, as if he's putting on a voice.
5. It's much more likely that attention-wanting guy like Sanjaya would desperately try to squeeze a couple extra minutes out of his ill-earned fame than it is that he is clever enough to have orchestrated this ruse.

Anyway, judge for yourself, right here.