Twitter Death

October 7, 2012 Devonice Gordon

Devonice Gordon
Twitter Deaths
10/06/2012
Over the course of twitter existence, many celebrities have passed away. Not in the real world but the Twitter world. Everyone from Justin Beiber to Adam Sandler all passed away according to Twitter. These were all a string of hoaxes tweeted by random tweeters who had too much time on their hands. My question is what makes people believe these hoaxes? Twitter deaths spread like wild fire and before you know it, everybody thinks that a celebrity is dead. When a celebrity really does pass away, do people shrug it off as a twitter death? As a college student, this subject has been brought up by my friends on occasion and each of us had our own opinion about it. We know better to confirm a death our self before we start to believe others. I know through my specific subject of education to check sources before I start to believe if anything is true. But what about the many people who believe them. For example, my sister called me and told me that Chris Brown got into a car accident and died. I asked her how she knew and she said it was on the news and that her friend saw it. I got off the phone and did my own internet search and sure enough, Chris Brown was off the south of France, vacationing on a yacht but his death was trending on twitter. He was nowhere near a car! These tweets are insensitive to family member, friends and fans. They cause many people to worry while others are tweet, retweet, and spread the rumor around. Eventually everybody finds out that it was a hoax but it’s has already done its damage by then. Twitter should hire people specifically for controlling these hoaxes by getting them off as soon as possible. These people should work over time to remove these death hoaxes.

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