On the evening of April 26, a Twitter prankster managed to trend the hashtag #RIPChrisBrown. Brown is the singer found guilty of assaulting pop star and then girlfriend Rihanna in 2009.
This particular Twitter prankster, operating under the account name MTV News fooled many folks by tweeting, simply, “#RIPChrisBrown.” In case you didn’t catch it right away (as I didn’t), the username of the parody MTV News account is spelled with two “v’s,” which happen to look like a “w” on small screens, like your phone. Many users were subsequently hoodvvinked.
The hashtag #RIPChrisBrown was tweeted just under 15,000 times in two hours, according to Topsy. It even trended worldwide, briefly.
While the hashtag was short-lived—many searched for additional media sources to verify the news—the tweets that were the most popular were telling, especially in the developed world. (A spam bot even tweeted the hashtag.)
A good chunk of the 15,000 Twitter mentions came from people who knew Brown was still alive but wanted, and used, the hashtag to engage in a public hate-fest against the singer.
This isn’t the first time the micro-blogging platform has killed a celebrity, nor is it the first time Brown was the target of a death hoax. Twitter users killed Chris Brown in February and used the occasion then as well to bring up his violent past with Rihanna.
Photo via Instagram
