Eddie Murphy Latest Victim of Snowboarding Death Hoax – The Hollywood Reporter
Jessica Wilkins If Global Associated News is to be believed, Switzerland is an extremely dangerous place to snowboard. On Saturday, the site posted a story saying Eddie Murphy had died snowboarding in the village of Zermatt. The rumor was quickly shot down.
“My brother is fine. People who start these type of rumors are sick people,” Murphy’s brother, Charlie Murphy, tweeted in response.
Global Associated News has run the same story before, but varying the celebrity said to have been the victim of the accident.
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Last March, the site claimed Jim Carrey had died in a snowboarding accident. The story was identical to the Murphy story, except for the name.The same day, it reported that Jeff Goldblum and Tom Hanks had died, too–both having fallen from a cliff in New Zealand.
But despite the proclivity for these stories to take hold on Twitter, Global Associated News does not purport to be an actual news site. At the bottom of the Murphy story was this disclaimer:
“This story is 100% fake! This is an entertainment website, and this is a totally fake article based on zero truth and is a complete work of fiction for entertainment purposes”
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The site allows users to insert names into story templates, which is why the same stories with different celebrity names keep popping up.
Murphy is just the latest in a line of celebrities recently rumored to have died. On Saturday alone, Drake, Taylor Swift, and LeBron James were all subjects of “R.I.P.” Twitter hastags, though most users seemed to be using the hashtags tongue-in-cheek. Last week, a rumor of Cher‘s death gained momentum after Kim Kardashian heard and then tweeted about it.
