The Internet continues to intersect with the “real” world in strange ways.

This article on Wired News explains the strange story of a small group of people with too much time on their hands creating a cult around the idea that Bert from Sesame Street is evil. They built parody sites, photoshopped images of Bert at the JFK assassination, standing behind Hitler, corrupting his poor pal Ernie at a strip club — you get the idea.

Someone decided to put Bert and Osama bin Laden together in a photo. Which is where the story turns bizarre. It turns out that bin Laden sympathizers have downloaded pictures of bin Laden from the Net to create posters to use at protests.

So when the media showed up to take photos of the protests, they captured the “Osama and Bert” images on the real world posters of bin Laden supporters.

What is truly strange is that the “Bert Is Evil” creator has decided that this was too much and he’s closed his site. Of course now others are taking the previously removed content and reposting it. And heated discussion has broken out in this subculture about what should be done.