If you’ve noticed a rise in “rest in peace” messages for various celebrities filling up your newsfeed lately, you’re certainly not alone, and it’s not because 2012 has seen an abnormal amount of celebrity deaths. Celebrity death hoaxes have seen a sudden spike towards the end of 2012, leaving the rest of us to question how and why they are managing to become so popular.
Spreading rumours about the demise of a famous figure is a hoax that has long dated Facebook and even the Internet.
Those who lived through the sixties may remember the long running Paul McCartney celebrity death hoax that continued for years, asserting that the Beatle had died in a car crash in 1966 and was duly replaced by a look-a-like. The hoax was prolific until around 1969 and some conspiracy theorists even today still assert that it is true. Hoaxes of this sort can even be found long before this, but with the advent of the Internet and social networking sites like Facebook, celebrity death hoaxes have become one of the most prolific hoaxes on the Internet.
In recent times, sites like fakeawish.com have certainly not helped celebrity death hoaxes disappear. Such sites allow Internet users to automatically generate fake news articles detailing the “death” of any person the user wishes. The site creates an article and publishes it on a little known web server for the whole world to see.
Social networkers then stumble upon the satire article after the hoaxers publish it on social networking sites and assume it must be true, and help spread the hoax further.
Another trending hoax sees the hoaxer set up a Facebook page entitled R.I.P. [insert celeb name here] and curiously manage to get the page viral, some of which manage to accumulate hundreds of thousands of Facebook “likes” in only a matter of days. How these pages manage to accumulate so many likes in such a short space of time remains unclear., but have claimed the “lives” of such celebs as Morgan Freeman, Billy Nye, Adam Sandler and uh.. Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
Perhaps so many of these pages get created everyday it is inevitable that a handful will go viral and fool many naïve Facebook users. Maybe the hoaxers have other tricks up their sleeves.
Perhaps the more reflective question is – why do these Facebook pages become viral when it is so incredibly easy to verify such stories on the Internet? So easy in fact, that it will most likely takes less time to verify the claim than to update your Facebook status to unwittingly spread the falsehood. Whilst it is true that in this world of instant sharing it is easier and quicker to create such a hoax, on the flip side of the same coin surely it is equally as easy and fast to debunk such nonsense?
So for those who may not understand how the Internet works, or for those who think Facebook is a credible news outlet, or perhaps the only site on the Internet, let us explain something that may save you time and embarrassment. If you do come across a webpage, a Facebook page or some hearsay about an apparently deceased celebrity, hop straight over to Google, enter said celebrities name into the search box and hit Google Search. Credible news outlets will be amongst the first to break genuine stories of this nature and such outlets appear at the top of the Google results. If the celebrity did die, you will see several credible news outlets appear at the top of the Google page. If nothing appears, you’re probably looking at a hoax.
Alternatively pick a handful of your favorite news websites, such as the BBC news or CNN and head over to those sites for verification. Simple.
As for those who start the hoaxes, they’re Internet trolls looking for attention. A few weeks ago from the time of writing this we wrote a small article on Internet trolls, what they feed on and how to respond to them. We explained that Internet trolls feed off the controversy that they create, and responding to them, by – for example – writing or liking their pages, is exactly what they want. The best course of action is to simply ignore everything they do and say. If everyone takes this advice, and the troll finds that their garble is falling upon deaf ears, the motivation to continue will soon dissolve.
And as for the hoaxes themselves, it just goes to highlight one important truth that everyone who reads this should already know – don’t believe everything you read on Facebook.
“The report of my death was an exaggeration” – Mark Twain in 1897, after learning of his mistaken obituary in the New York Journal
