We know saying that so-and-so has been Punk’d is kind of over, but this time, seriously, we’ve been punk’d.

Turns out that Paris Hilton’s Shaman was always an actor and Paris new it. Turns out the story about Paris giving away a diamond necklace because of the Shaman, was actually planted by the Shaman’s people, because the Shaman’s people are Ashton Kutcher’s people and Ashton got us for his new reality TV series (not the one with Tyra?), where he plants stories in the gossip media.

Just imagine our surprise at this Huffington Post short end:

Paris Hilton had an improbable dinner date in L.A. Saturday: a gray-haired, orange-robed “shaman” who blessed her and urged her to give a diamond necklace to a total stranger. “He’s really changed my life,” Hilton told paparazzi from her car, adding she offered the necklace “because the greatest gift is to give.”

Turns out, as some outlets later discovered, the “mystic” was an actor named Maxie Santillan Jr., who has appeared on CSI and My Name Is Earl. And though some accused Hilton of getting Punk’d, the joke’s on them: The entire scene was staged for a new show from Punk’d producer Ashton Kutcher premiering Sunday on E! (10:30 ET/PT).

Pop Fiction, an eight-episode series, is a prank show targeting paparazzi and gullible media outlets. It’s made with the eager help of stars, who were the laughing stocks of Kutcher’s former MTV show. This time the shoe’s on the other foot, and the series has been kept so tightly under wraps that E!’s own website fell victim to the Hilton hoax and other planted stories that producers won’t yet divulge.

As painful as it is, we need to congratulate Ashton Kutcher for realizing how this whole gossip thing works and trying his hand at pranking the media and the gossip population instead of embarrassing celebrities.

Word on the street is that some other planted stories are already out there, so now we have to be vigilant, too? Man, this job get weird a lot.

Right now, we’re banking on that feeling we get when something is just so entertaining it couldn’t possibly be true. The Shaman being an actor was that level of entertaining, but we didn’t know we had Kutcher-fakes running around.

Between that and our damn assumption that Swayze was fine because the National Enquirer are a bunch of idiots, we aren’t doing the best job of sniffing out the truth this week.

But you can bet we’ll be tuning into Pop Fiction if it really does premiere this Sunday.