On Thursday 25th June at around 10:20 GMT the news started to break that Michael Jackson had been taken to hospital and at this time his death was not entirely confirmed. As rumours began to spread that the star might be dead I saw the opportunity to prank two of my friends (http://www.twitter.com/wstrachan and http://www.twitter.com/haigyman). The original idea of the prank was to use the Fake a Wish fake celebrity death generator to try and trick them into believing a beloved celebrity had passed away.
My initial thoughts were to play on the idea of the trifecta of celebrity deaths, Farrah Fawcett having died the day before. The reason for choosing Jeff Goldblum? I don't know really, he seems like the kind of actor someone would have a strong emotional response to. I had considered using Bill Murray but for some reason didn't feel it would have the same impact.
Keep in mind at this stage I had intended this as a joke for two people. I had no idea of the events that would transpire.
After generating the URL on Fake a Wish I tweeted it. It's worth noting that I only had around 150 followers at this point and about 50 of those were spam bots. The original tweet - Link
If you doubt me I challenge you to find a tweet posted before mine referencing Jeff Goldblum's death.
The prank works perfectly, even though the autogenerated site is suspicious as hell and even says at the bottom (link here) of the page that it is fictional they are both briefly convinced it is true. I confess to them it is a joke and they quite rightly tell me "fuck you".
At this point I am more than satisfied, the prank has reached its intended audience and succeeded. Over the next 20 minutes Michael Jackson's death is confirmed across the various news networks and Twitter is starting to show signs of buckling under the strain of the constant tweets.
What happened next I can't really say for sure. If anything it was a domino effect. My original url got retweeted and started spreading like wildfire. I can only put it down to a case of mass hysteria in the immediate wake of Michael Jackon's passing. People were blindly retweeting the URL without waiting for further confirmation (or even reading the entire page to see that it was fake).
The original URL was tweeted over 600 times - Tweetmeme Stats Page
Alongside this people weren't even tweeting the URL, they were just passing comments regarding the actor dying. This was probably more dangerous than the original URL as where the original site is clearly a fake, people can read anything into a person's comments.
Within a few hours the news of Jeff Goldblum dying was creeping up the trends list on Twitter, overtaking Iran. At the height of its popularity it was the second most searched term on Google and Twitter after 'Michael Jackson Dead.' The Google trends show that it was the 4th most popular search phrase overall on the 25th June. - Top Google Trends for 25th June
I can only guess that when it started creeping up the Twitter trends list people were assuming without any other confirmation that Jeff was dead based on the hundreds of confused people tweeting at the time.
12:12AM GMT - Australian morning news TV show 'The Today Show' runs the Jeff Goldblum rumour as a story, claiming that New Zealand police have confirmed his death.
12:33AM GMT - At some point the Jeff Goldblum page on Wikipedia gets locked, but that doesn't stop several people discussing it on the talk page, including a mention of myself:
Here's the original tweet which started the hoax; http://twitter.com/JohnSkelton/status/2332616896 . Notice how the url it links to can be changed to any celebrity? LiamUK (talk) 00:33, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
1:12AM GMT - Kevin Spacey posts on Twitter to try and debunk the Jeff Goldblum death rumour - Link
As the Jeff Goldblum hoax continued to infect twitter, a google search at the time showed hundreds of forums where people were asking 'Is Jeff Goldblum dead?'. It had also spread to Facebook with 'RIP Jeff Goldblum' groups appearing.
Jeff Goldblum himself made an appearance on the Colbert Report to deny his own death. Stephen Colbert and Jeff then watch the news report of The Today Show confirming his death. Jeff then goes on to eulogize himself.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Jeff Goldblum Will Be Missed | ||||
| ||||
50 comments:
Secured your place in hell, eh my friend?
;-)
I just can't believe he's gone :(
It's pretty pathetic that you so desperately need everybody to know that you started it. Would be much cooler to keep it to yourself. Is it that you need some kind of pat on the back or what? Perhaps you simply wanted the moment where your life peaked recorded somewhere.
Wow. Congratulations.
It would have been cooler if you had kept that comment to yourself.
A fascinating glimpse into the way a simple joke can turn into a worldwide phenomenon. It's all in the timing.
Death Day was the 25th, not the 26th, you pathetic faggot.
Fair play to you. An interesting - albeit unwitting - demonstration of gullibility and hysteria en masse.
The humourless, uninquisitive and easily-angered Anons of this world have already begun to descend onto your comments page I see. I dare say you'll get a fair few more of them venting their bile. Something tells me you won't mind too much though. And you shouldn't.
Im so mad at the fact that you chose Jeff Goldblum and in the face of a serious set of tragedies. People in Cali, USA believed your ridiculous ass... you're hella stupid and you need Jesus... by the way, great joke... too bad it backfired on your dumb ass.
Funny and interesting... what I like most is that while 'old media' hacks love to criticise 'new media' for a lack of thorough fact checking and investigation, 'old media' are all too often taken in by pranks like this. And they're the ones with cash to spend researching stories...
Brilliant. Loved watching it play out. Always play with their minds!
Very interesting.
Anatomy of twitter histeria? Makes good reading.
It says a lot about the internet and the people who use it. Same goes for the idiotic comments posted here :(
Yes, "John" Skelton. I'm with Mojo - what about the poor people of Cali, USA? Didn't you stop to think of them? DIDN'T YOU?!!? Find Jesus quickly - he loved a good faking-death trick.
That last comment made my day
Fair play, but next time keep it to yourself.
Nice one, very funny, and even better that Jeff seemed to take it so well!
I don't really know what you hope to achieve by boasting about this, I mean nobody is going to like or respect you more for it. However you have shown up the gullible nature of Twitter users and the terrible researchers employed in certain media outlets so it was not all in vain.
You're gonna feel pretty bad when Jeff actually dies!
I love how people just don't bother with little things like official sources anymore. "I heard it on the internet, it must be true!" Ignore all the haters here my friend, they're probably just embarrassed that they fell for it ;)
I don't believe you've 'really' boasted about, all that happened was you fooled two of your friends, then via the magic of twitter things got out of hand. I don't think you did it maliciously or anything. You could have worked it in a team to get a cheap laugh, but you did it and it went out of control.
Callum
I recorded my accessory to his murder - http://bit.ly/19c73K
You lame-ass.
Not interested in you, but to everyone who's bothered to get this far, this hoax is three years old.
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/cliffdeath.asp
Genius. Pure Genius.
Jeff Goldblum seemed to have fun with it. Don't be such a downer Anonymous. I think it's pretty pathetic that you think it's pretty pathetic. Anonymous, dude, it would be much cooler to keep that to yourself.
I don't think this was really a boast. I don't think his intention was to trick the world into thinking Jeff Goldblum was dead, and I don't think he was responsible for it either. It was just some random thing that the internet picked up on, and this piece just documents how fast it spread... causing unintended but very funny consequences.
Actually Jeff Goldblum has been diagnosed with CANCER today!
Totally interesting post. Thanks!
Good job stupid.
I respect John Skelton more now. I love how he has managed to show up mainstream media, just by using a joke site to prank a couple of mates. Those who reported it as true need to take a long hard look at themselves and consider where they source their stories from.
I don't know why some people have commented that you've written this post as a "boast"? It seems quite obvious that you only set out to trick two friends (not the entire Internet), but the whole thing just snowballed out of control amid the hysteria surrounding Jacko’s untimely death.
I thought the timeline of events was really interesting to read. Not only did your prank inadvertently expose some lazy journalism, but it also gave Stephen Colbert some good material. Also, you couldn't have picked a nicer bloke to kill off! Jeff Goldblum seemed to have fun with it, which is more than I can say for the anons leaving humourless and acerbic comments here.
You're a liar, so why should we believe you this time?
I hear virgilio anderson is dead now too.
yeah this whole things been kinda funny, shows up the fickle nature of the media, but this guy is revelling a little too much in his 15 minutes of fame, and he is boasting otherwise he wouldnt've blogged it.
He's lucky he picked a movie star with a sense of humor who isn't likely to get all litigious, him being so keen to have his name be known and all that.
That clip from the Australian news programme was pretty amazing. No point in checking your sources yourself, when you can just go by one page on the internet...
I'd say good work, but obviously none of this was your intention from the start (a fact that a bunch of people commenting seem unable to grasp). Must have been fascinating to watch unfold, if slightly scary... fair play though, Jeff Goldblum seemed to find it as funny as everyone else.
Just to point out - The Today Show is far from a news programme! Pretty lame stuff from them though, but wouldn't expect any more from Richard Wilkins.
Jesus John, you had an eventful day; i'll give you that.
Goldblum really played it off well, i must say.
To everyone having a go at you here, don't mind them. Obviously, this is no 'boast' as it's not like you intended for any of this to happen. And you writing about it is hardly 'looking for attention', it's seems to me like you're fessing up for the part you played in all this.
Fair play.
PS. I hear that John Skelton is dead.
Not funny. However, it is an interesting demonstration of how new media cannot be trusted in the way that newspapers used to be. But a shame that some professional media outlets picked it up just the same.
congrats on your sorry 10 seconds of fame
Ignore the haters. The joke was funny. If people are mad then they should have confirmed the info before believing.
Wait, it was on the Internet. It must be true. /sarcasm off
Wow...the works really flooding in now. Thanks John.
Earth Girls Are Easy 2 has now been greenlit for production..woo hoo.
Kind Regards,
Jeff Goldblum
Quite funny how people are saying john skelton is boasting - shows to me they havent read the article. The tone of his writing doesn't seem boastful to me and fair play to him for owning up and taking time to explain how it happened. Perhaps the people commenting have some kind of agenda.
john skelton isn't the problem, or twitter infact... its lazy journalism and a snowball effect that was obviously not planned. Jeff took it well and its probably boosted his profile a bit - so whats the big deal. Plus it gave people something else to talk about other than a child molester dying of a drug overdose.
this post should've been titled 'i didn't kill jeff goldblum, BUT IF I HAD...' like the OJ simpson book about how he would've killed nicole and ron... IF HE HAD DONE IT ;)
If this had happened to me, I'd have definitely blogged about it, as it's an interesting read. I'd like to say I'm surprised that so many people have jumped on you claiming that you're showing off, but sadly people don't have anything better to do!
Good work, though :)
Awesome!!!
Shows how powerfull twitter is!
Once again the media flies right at the UV-light! The same thing happened not so long ago: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0506/1224245992919.html
Farrah and MJ died on the same day dumbass.
Wow, why are people so angry? I thought it was really funny and I appreciated that you gave us insight into how it all happened. Well done!
@Mojo "you're hella stupid and you need Jesus..."
Wait, is the idea here to make him more stupid?
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Very nice accounting. The hoax' growth was so organic, I assumed it was one of those things where we'd never know how it started.
Thanks for the writeup!
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