Last night I saw a couple people around the internet talking about the death of Morgan Freeman. Then I saw one of my Facebook friends liked a paged called R.I.P Morgan Freeman.
My first thought was, “my goodness how did I not know about this and why is it not on MovieByte?” So I started looking for the story. Turns out this is a complete hoax. Mr. Freeman has been the victim of a fake death scandal as he is actually alive and well.
Morgan Freeman is a staple in pop culture so it only makes sense that word of his death would spread quickly. That is exactly what happened on Wednesday when a Facebook group went up declaring that the actor had passed away. Fortunately, this is just another celebrity death hoax and Morgan Freeman is alive and well.
Gossip Cop confirmed that 75-year-old Morgan Freeman is alive and well. However, there are over 48,000 people who like the Facebook page declaring that the actor is dead. Despite several reports debunking this rumor, it is alive and well on the social networking site with people leaving their condolences every few seconds. Luckily, there are those who have caught on to the rumor and are trying to let people on the page know.
I was one of those trying to let people on the page know that he was not dead. I posted several links verifying that he was alive. Unfortunately because of the way links from others show up on Facebook pages, not many people see them.
Morgan Freeman died on Thursday—not in real life, but according to a Twitter hoax that duped countless users.
Though the actor is alive and well, a rumor rocketed across the internet on Thursday that CNN had reported his death.
Rumors of the actor’s alleged demise spread because of an “R.I.P. Morgan Freeman” Facebook page claiming he died on September 5.
The page received thousands and thousands of “likes,” perpetuating the bogus story.
Freeman is NOT dead.
And a little more from PopEater on how it happened:
“How did the rumor begin?” Slate.com asks. “Blame it on @originalcjizzle, a guy with nearly 1,500 followers who is fond of calling people ‘jive turkeys.’ Just before 5PM ET, @originalcjizzle tweeted: RT @CNN: Breaking News: actor Morgan Freeman has passed away in his Burbank home<< wow legendary actor #RIPmorganfreeman.”
C. Jizzle’s post feigned CNN’s authority; anyone can perform a manual retweet regardless of its veracity.
So the moral of the story here is to check your facts. There’s this really cool tool on the internet, perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s called Google. What you do is you go to google.com and start typing in a search, a question like, “Is Morgan Freeman dead?” or “Morgan Freeman death” or “Morgan Freeman death hoax” and the true story will easily come to the forefront.
Google people. Google.