Johnny Depp killed online

Updated on: 25 January,2010 08:00 AM IST |
Agencies |

Hoax of actor's death in accident spread like wild fire

Hoax of actor's death in accident spread like wild fire

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Johnny Depp

According to the allegations, the actor was killed in a car crash near Bordeaux, France, last morning. But unlike so many other rumours of its kind, those behind this one went all out to make people believe Depp was dead.

First of all, the culprits created a fake CNN page on Angelfire, which allegedly reported Depp's death. They even had a picture of his wrecked car, after it supposedly crash-ed into a guard rail. The website claimed that CNN's Melissa Gray and Harris Whitback wrote this report -- but there are many obvious clues that they didn't.

For one thing, the story was listed as having been posted on March 25, 2004.
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For another, right after it said "alcohal" caused the incident, there was a story below about British explorers who escaped from caves in Mexico. If CNN was going to report that Depp was dead, they wouldn't have included a completely unrelated story in the web page -- and would have written more than a few sentences about it.

With this 'story' Depp joins the vast ranks of celebrities who have been killed online, like Miley Cyrus, Harrison Ford and Jeff Goldblum. Some celebrities get killed multiple times by online rumours, like Cyrus, so this is one A-list that Depp hasn't reached yet.

Others who died online

Miley Cyrus, Harrison Ford and Jeff Goldblum, among others

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