Rumors

17 Nov 2013
Rumors
Last night, a piece of news grabbed my eye with the title” Mr. Bean Rowan Atkinson Died at 58 after Committing Suicide”, which attracted thousands of people leaving comment like “R.I.P Mr. Bean” and expressing their condolence on their Facebook pages. It turned out that Mr. Atkinson is very much alive. And it has been the second time that he was “killed” by the Internet. If you really dig into celebrities who have become the victims of death hoax, the list would be a couple of pages long.  
First of all, what makes me really angry is that people made up horrible things for their own benefit or even their own interest. In the Mr. Bean’s death hoax case, a link was provided for people to watch Mr. Bean’s suicide video, which was intended to trick gullible Facebook users installing a malicious application that would cause a virus infection on their computers. What a horrible thing that people have nothing to do but scare friends, families and fans of their loved ones for their sick purpose.
And also how people all of a sudden lost their ability to judge the truth shocked me. Because everyone wants to be the first to RIP a celebrity so no one bothers to find the facts? Why would people rather to waste time grieve over a living person’s “death” or why would they even share the misinformation with friends before they ever simply move their fingers and cross-check the information? Beside celebrity death hoax, there are many rumors that reveal only part of the whole story also caused tremendous misleading impact. But why would people believe something that they never saw or never heard about before so easily?
You can hear the rumors, but you cannot know them. We are exposed to messages crammed with bias and even false information from newspapers, radios, televisions, Internet and all kinds of social medias. People really need to learn scrutinize the source before they spread the misleading information. “Rumors are carried by haters, spread by...