On Oct. 20, 2009, Twitter exploded with reports that rapper Kanye West was killed in a car accident–and it took longer than it should have to quell the rumor.
An Internet board called 4chan.org was accused of posting a phony report that West died in a crash in Los Angeles involving two custom cars. The rumor quickly raced across online boards, into e-mail chains and circulated among friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter.
By the following morning the phrase “Kanye West died” was one of the most-searched topics on Google.
The fake news story claimed that “a bizarre car crash in Los Angeles involving two luxury cars left rapper Kanye West dead, a second injured, a third arrested for gross vehicular manslaughter and a fourth person was detained by police. A Los Angeles Police Department officer witnessed the wreck and saw a red Ferrari and a white Porsche ‘spinning out of control’ on Jamboree Road between Bison Avenue and East Bluff Drive.”
It took Ye’s then girlfriend, Amber Rose, to finally put the lie to bed. She took to her Twitter account and gave everybody hell.
“This ‘RIP Kanye West’ topic is not funny and it’s NOT TRUE! He has people like myself and his family that love him very much …
“It’s in extreme poor taste to have that as a trendy topic. It’s totally disrespectful to make up a story like this we’re all human …
“we all make mistakes and to say someone died cuz of a mistake is ridiculous. You wouldn’t want someone to say that about you.” –kathleen cross
