BE DOPE NEWS (BDN) In a shocking development, the origins of Be's popular icons have been traced back not to Be, Inc., but to a tiny village known only as Icon Town.

"This is the most significant discovery since the Icon-O-Matic," said renowned iconologist Dr. James Rivera.

The discovery has led to a bitter debate among the Be community. Ruled with an iron hand by Icon Town mayor Bernd "Be" Holzhausen, the citizens are forced to create BeOS icons in what some call "near-sweatshop conditions".

"These citizens are forced to work for barely US$50 a month," said one protestor, who has delete all Be icons from her hard drive. "Sure, that is more than Nike factory workers in Indonesia get, but still, it is hardly enough for these pixelated citizens to live on."

Holzhausen doesn't feel the same way.

"I give them hard drive space for storage of their icon buildings, a crisp monitor for 1024x768 display - all a tiny electronic citizen could ever ask for," countered Holzhausen. "These people have it easy. When I came to Icon Town it was nothing but a handful of flat buildings on a blurry black & white monitor. I made Icon Town what it is today."

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