14 DAY TRIAL // Actor Michael J. Fox has lost his years-long battle with Parkinson’s Disease and died on October 5, claims a vicious and totally unfounded rumor that’s now making the rounds online. Worried fans should know that he’s OK.
Because of his health, Fox has been targeted by such reports before but that doesn’t make them any less unfunny. The most recent comes from a website that claims to be a satire e-zine but which is, in fact, only spreading rumors and lies.
The other day, the site in question, Mediamass, reported that the news of Fox’s death had been confirmed on Facebook, where a RIP Michael J. Fox page had already been set up.
Admittedly, it partly read that it was a “tribute [page] to a legend,” created after he lost the battle with Parkinson’s.
“At about 11 a.m. ET on Saturday (October 05, 2013), our beloved actor Michael J. Fox passed away. Michael J. Fox was born on June 9, 1961 in Edmonton. He will be missed but not forgotten. Please show your sympathy and condolences by commenting on and liking this page,” it also said.
As it turns out, the page never existed, so this wasn’t a typical hoax that included a link for heartbroken fans, through which malware would be installed on their computer. It was just a “prank” in which a website created a rumor and passed it for “satire.”
In a disclaimer, the website is described as “the medium of our satire to expose with humor, exaggeration and ridicule the contemporary mass production and mass consumption that we observe.”
The same disclaimer makes it sound as if circulating fake death reports is some sort of cultural experiment. If that’s really the case, it certainly doesn’t take into account the many people it hurts – and we’re not even talking about fans here, but about friends and families of the celebrities targeted, who could actually believe that what they read is true.
“Sensationalism, lack of verification of information, ethics and standards issues are only symptoms of the actual social and economic order. This is particularly obvious when observing the role of social networking sites in spreading rumors,” says the disclaimer.
Following outrage over the Michael J. Fox story, the website updated the original article to make it clear that it was just a hoax. It even says now that it wasn’t funny at all.