Still living in 2010 with the factoid column as a report of celebrity death hoaxes hit Entertainment Weekly and caught my eyes. They said that in the past year, the Internet has carried false death claims for Owen Wilson, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, and Morgan Freeman.
I’m never one to believe these things, largely because I don’t have a Twitter or check it ever, so I’m not exposed to these false claims. Only when a celebrity actually dies do I notice it on Facebook because suddenly everyone posts statuses.
I’ll never forget when Michael Jackson died and “RIP Michael” flooded Facebook. If I recall, his death was the biggest spike in Internet traffic ever. I remember I was on my way to see “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” when I heard he had collapsed, and then I got a text from my mom on my shattered iPhone that he had died.
And I’ll also never forget when Heath Ledger died. I was having my second driving lesson of Driver’s Ed, and while sitting in the backseat, the radio DJ announced that he had died. At first I didn’t believe it, but then they kept saying it between songs and I realized it had to be true. Every high school girl died a little inside that night, and they took to Facebook with their grief.
So go away celebrity death hoaxes. No one’s ever going to believe them unless they hear it from all angles.
Whenever a celebrity dies, I always see it on TV. When heath dies I was for some reason watching E! and at the bottom they said that he died. It’s a bummer, but celebrity hoaxes are dumb, even though we would love to think their all still alive somehow, somewhere.