Reports of Kanye’s death in a “bizarre” automobile accident began surfacing yesterday and quickly gained traction thanks in large part to Twitter and Facebook.
Most sources attribute the birth of the fake story to image board 4chan.org and hackers whose goal was to land “Kanye West died” in the top spot on Internet search results – a feat they’d accomplished by early this morning, according to MTV.com.
MTV said the tall tale goes like this: “A bizarre car crash in Los Angeles involving two luxury cars early this morning [left] rapper Kanye West dead, a second injured, a third arrested for gross vehicular manslaughter and a fourth person was detained by police. A Los Angeles Police Department officer witnessed the wreck and saw a red Ferrari and a white Porsche ‘spinning our of control’ on Jamboree Road between Bison Avenue and East Bluff Drive.”
Despite the fact that the story contains an amazing amount of detail, including a graphic description of the aftermath and injuries and additional quotes from police, it’s nothing more than elaborate hoax.
West and his reps have been silent about the story, but the rapper’s current gal pal Amber Rose responded angrily on her Twitter account.
“This ‘RIP Kanye West’ topic is not funny and it’s NOT TRUE!,” Rose tweeted. “He has people like myself and his family that love him very much … It’s in extreme poor taste to have that as a trendy topic. It’s totally disrespectful to make up a story like this we’re all human … and we all make mistakes and to say someone died cuz of a mistake is ridiculous. You wouldn’t want someone to say that about you.”
Death scams are a growing problem on the web. As MTV points out, the fake Kanye story is just the latest in a series of hoaxes that have been perpetrated on a gullible Internet community. Others who supposedly perished in bizarre accidents so far this year include Lil Wayne, Miley Cyrus, Jeff Goldblum, Natalie Portman and Matt Damon.