The rumor that Morgan Freeman passed away today made it's way through the twitter universe. The tweet purportedly came from CNN's twitter account. The network has clarified this though saying that "CNN did not report Morgan Freeman death. Rumor is false. CNN will aggressively investigate this hoax."
The hoax fooled many people though as it was re-tweeted throughout the web. I've noticed that celebrity death's seem to happen pretty often on the internet. I remember awhile back there was a rumor that Zach Braff had passed away.
I'm not sure how these things spread so quickly, or why they get started in the first place. Maybe it's that thing we have inside of us that makes us want to be the first to tell our friends about something, that makes us jump to pass along news like this. You know the urge I'm talking about, the one that makes you send out Youtube links to people in hopes that you'll be the first to introduce them to some hilarious video. We always want to be one of the first to know, or tell, about something, and so things like this spread like wildfire through the interweb.
And I'm not really sure about the people who actually start these rumors. As far as their motivation is concerned I mean. We all know that one person who does things just to see what happens. Maybe this is the same mentality behind spreading around fake celebrity death reports. I remember in the case of Zach Braff the guy who started it was dubbed, "douchebag" of the day by Zach Braff himself, for making his mother cry.
I think in the end people just want to feel special and get attention. The person who started today's rumor is anonymous for now, but he's still getting attention. Attention by people like me who write about this stuff, and people like you who read about it.
The point is, don't believe everything you read on twitter and people are attention whores, and hopefully the guy who started today's rumor didn't make anyone in Morgan Freeman's family cry.
John Bobst aka The Force of Nature
Check out my other work at www.theforceofnature.net
No comments:
Post a Comment