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Just days after the shocking death of Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett, Malaysians had to brace themselves for yet another high-profile celebrity death - this time involving 80's pop sensation Rick Astley. Known best for his uptempo hit, Never Gonna Give You Up, an 80's chart topper that was recently revived thanks to a series of online pranks known as Rick Rolls, it looked like the laughs were about to come to an end when news of his untimely demise hit Malaysia's most popular daily newspaper's website.
However, when news of the report hit Twitter some moments later (as things like these usually do), the reactions weren't exactly mournful. In fact, they were downright critical. A quick look at my Twitter list showed questions like "Did he really die?" and "Where's the source?" instead of the usual "Oh no... I'm going to cry my eyeballs out tonight T_____T...".
Pwnage continues after the jump.
Puzzled by this disbelief, we dug a little deeper and before long, we found the catalyst to this grave piece of misinformation - the one and only 4Chan.
Apparently, with the help of CNN's iReport, 4Chan users were able to submit a fake story on how Rick Astley was found dead in a Berlin hotel. Thanks to the CNN tag on the submitted story, news mongers around the world (or at least here in Malaysia) recognized it as being a legitimate source and proceeded to send the story to print.
A quick check back on the Star's website shows that swift action was taken once the editors realized that the story was a fake, and even though they moved fast enough to avoid being cached by Google, damage had already been done on "instant" social media channels such as Twitter.
Hopefully, "reputable" sources of information such as daily newspapers will learn from this episode, and realize that not everything you read on the web is true - even if it's from CNN.
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