Jimmy Fallon Jokingly Requests Elon Musk's Help With Twitter Death Hoax
The comedian and actor fell victim to a now-viral Twitter scheme.
While it's safe to say that Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter isn't going according to plan, leading to some hilarious memes, Jimmy Fallon recently became the victim of a death hoax on the site after "#RIPJimmyFallon" began trending despite the TV host being alive and well.
Around 11 p.m. on Nov. 15, the hashtag was the second top trend, with over 13,000 tweets. By this morning, there were more than double that number.
An account pretending to be The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon tweeted out a fake post reporting that Fallon died, which honestly looked pretty legitimate, leading many to spread the "news" as fact. The one think that could have easily tipped off anyone that was paying attention was the birth year, which would have made the host 99 at the time of death.
Luckily, once you clicked on the hashtag it became clear very quickly that it was not true, as people used it to share photos of other celebrities like James Corden, Matt Damon, and even Jimmy Kimmel in Fallon's place.
In response to the hashtag, Fallon tweeted the new head of Twitter, Musk, with a hilarious request: "Elon, can you fix this? #RIPJimmyFallon."
At this point, mostly everyone knew the hashtag was fake and that Fallon was actually alive and well, so they joined in on the fun instead.
People joked around Fallon's replies, saying things like, "Oh my god, a ghost," and "Sorry. [Musk] already fired the team who could fix it."
Musk tweeted back to Fallon on the morning of Nov. 16, but it wasn't very helpful, simply writing, "Fix what?"
While Musk could easily course-correct and get rid of the hashtag, it looks like Fallon was mainly joking and not overly bothered by the trending moment as he didn't even tag the CEO of Tesla in his original tweet.
Also, Musk has seemingly bigger things to deal with as the 51-year-old began his time at Twitter by firing a bunch of top executives, followed by massive staff layoffs that led many to come together and sue Musk.
As a result, major advertisers have left the site, as reported by Gizmodo, which Musk blamed on "activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists."
Only time will tell what happens to Twitter under Musk's rule, but so far, it's been full of chaos and issues. But to sum it all up, Fallon is alive and well and ready to continue hosting more late night shows!
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