Famous comedian Steve Harvey responded with a meme to the RIP Harvey trend on Twitter.
Twitter, the root of all kinds of gossip and hoaxes, had a hashtag RIP Harvey trend yesterday. As people on the internet do, netizens took it out of context and thought that Steve Harvey, the well-loved comedian and host, has passed away.
Harvey responded to the trend with a meme of himself checking his phone and captioned it, “Me seeing that Rip Harvey is trending.” So don’t panic, folks, Steve Harvey is very much alive and still as funny as ever.
Where did the RIP Harvey Trend Come From?
Netizens can recall that back in March, a Facebook post made rounds and became viral for saying that Steve Harvey has passed away. A Youtube video confirmed the viral Facebook post and got more people confused. However, Harvey came out and falsified the rumors, proving that he is updated with social media and is in good health.
Because of Steve Harvey’s hilarious response to the RIP Harvey trend, people knew that it wasn’t him who died. So everyone started speculating and recalling other famous Harveys to check if it was one of them who passed away. But they were all accounted for, so where did this death hoax come from?
The True Story
Turns out, it’s not a hoax at all, but a story that was blown out of proportion, as the internet does. The story was so ordinary, you wouldn’t think it would start a hashtag on Twitter.
A Kentucky radio station, KSR, had a regular caller named Harvey Doyle. He had gotten to know the hosts in the radio company because he regularly talked to them. Yesterday, July 18th, Matt Jones, a host from KSR, posted to his social media accounts that Harvey Doyle has passed away. He saw it posted on his page and thought his listeners should know. He also used the RIP Harvey hashtag in his post.
The people who saw his post most likely saw the previous RIP Harvey death hoax and because he didn’t specify that it was Harvey Doyle he was talking about, everyone ran with their own theories. More people joined the bandwagon and it became a conspiracy theory fest on Twitter yesterday.
Celebrity Death Conspiracies
Of course, Steve Harvey isn’t the only celebrity victim of death hoaxes. Perhaps the most famous one is the conspiracy theory that Avril Lavigne isn’t the original Avril Lavigne anymore. People say that the real Avril died way back in 2003 and the one we see now is just a clone. Conspiracy theorists claim that the singer we know today is a replacement whose real name is Melissa.
These death hoaxes can be hilarious when we see them floating on the internet. However, in hindsight, it can make or break a celebrity’s career. Nevertheless, it is just one form of misinformation that plagues the internet. It is still a problem that needs solving. But we can always have a good laugh at it just like how Steve Harvey responded with a meme to the RIP Harvey trend.