Here at Snopes, we have had no shortage of death hoaxes to debunk. He fabricated the death of author Cormac McCarthy by creating a fake Twitter account for McCarthy’s publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, and the supposed deaths of numerous other famous people. Incredible!”But death hoaxes have other reasons for existing, too, beyond being a dark joke. The celebrity death hoax proliferates across the internet mainly because it feeds on a number of more basic instincts among users, such as “performing” their grief on social media. In the case of online death notices, one should also ask the following questions:Is the announcement coming from a verified source like an official spokesperson, family member, or a celebrity’s verified social media account?

Source: Washington Post September 22, 2022 19:10 UTC