I think I've had this discussion with you. "they" are TLDs I can use tor (.onion), namecoin (.bit), dn42 test net (.dn42) or others. They work and people use

I think I've had this discussion with you. "they" are TLDs I can use tor (.onion), namecoin (.bit), dn42 test net (.dn42) or others. They work and people use them, so not fake, just not registered with ICANN. Most of them work fine along with ICANN DNS. They require alternative forms of DNS resolution, so they don't work with ICANN DNS, but that is actually desirable for many of them. I can also have .lan addresses on my router, .corp addresses on corporate vpn, or whatever in my hosts file and they work. Hosts file works even better than global DNS, so the domains are definitely real, not fake. Just not global, even when globally used.