Taylor Swift Becomes Twitter Death Hoax Victim
Taylor Swift is not dead. The 22-year-old songstress joins a not-so-illustrious group that includes country superstars like Reba McEntire and Garth Brooks, in that she is the latest victim of an online death hoax. Recently, all three of these acts have made membership in a group that no one would want. Thankfully, the ‘Mean’ singer is alive and well and this was all a, well, mean joke.
E! reports that the rumors began swirling when a Twitter account — which claimed to be associated with MTV News — issued a post indicating that Swift was found dead at her home over the weekend. Again, the story has been proven untrue.
This is not the first time Swift has been the subject of a death hoax, however. She was the victim of a similarly cruel online prank in 2009 after rapper Kanye West firebombed her MTV VMAs acceptance speech, adding insult to injury.
Reba McEntire, who faced her own death hoax earlier this year, responded with grace and humor. In July, fabricated reports that Garth Brooks had been killed on a jet ski spread quickly, though the singer didn’t acknowledge them.
Don’t online hucksters have anything better to do with their time than make up stories about famous people dying? It certainly gets in the way of legitimate media stories and clogs up the process of separating fact from fiction.
Swift is such a wholesome celebrity with a squeaky clean image, so these sorts of exaggerated reports always seem highly suspicious anyway. Even so, we’re just glad that it’s not true. The world would be much worse off without a talent like Taylor Swift in it.