Hugh Hefner Hugh Hefner is the newest famous person to have been determined by rumors of his death, dispersal across the internet.
Social networks such as Face book and Twitter were abuzz with news of the end of the iconic creator of Playboy magazine, who has lately had a little trouble in matters of the heart when his Playmate fiancee Crystal Harris called off their marriage. According to reports, Hefner was supposed to have died of a heart attack on Monday 11th July at 10:58PM EST.
Would you have supposed the reports from your social networking associates, or gone hunt for further confirmation? After all, in the history we’ve seen internet rumors spread about the hypothetical death of Christian Slater and Tom Cruise. Also, neither Johnny Depp nor Harry Potter starlet Emma Watson nor Kanye West have died in a car crash either.
A website called ThinkRichMusic may have been partly accountable for rousing up the frantic coverage of the dressing gown-wearing octogenarian’s demise with its over-excitable reporting. Cynics may speculate if a website might be keen to post a false story concerning the death of a celebrity in order to take delivery of a flood of traffic from social networkers, trying to corroborate the news.
I’m satisfied to see that ThinkRichMusic has now post an addition to its article saying that Hefner is not dead. But I wonder how many people scroll down that far. I believe there’s a significant lesson for all internet users, to get their news from entrenched news sites. On too many occasion we have seen malware being distributed from poisoned WebPages that claim to contain breaking news or shocking videos featuring people in the headline.
Fortunately, the news of Hefner’s death was false, and the founder of Playboy magazine turned to twitter to announce, in the style of Mark Twain, that the rumors of his death were greatly overstated.
Hefner, ever the self-publicist, also couldn’t pass up the opportunity to point out that not only was he far from dead, but he was also “lying in bed” next to his new Playboy model girlfriend Shera Be chard with a “big smile on [his] face”.
Some belongings never change. Another thing which won’t change is cybercriminals taking advantage of internet memes and breaking news stories – whether they are based in truth or utter garbage.