Today's Twitter Hysteria Says Patrick Swayze Has Died; He Didn't

[BlueJessamine]

Gawker

http://gawker.com/5261286/todays-twitter-hysteria-says-patrick-swayze-has-died-he-didnt?skyline=true&s=x

Patrick Swayze is alive and well, his spokesman has confirmed. How did false reports of his passing consume the internet for several hours today? Through the false

Initial reports, as well as the statement from Swayze's flack, falsely blamed a radio station in Florida. But it turns out that station reported no such thing; now at least one source, the gossip site Oh No they Didn't, says news service BNO "broke" the story on Twitter.

There's no question the story spread quickly there (see screenshot at left). Or that it spread widely on email, where we got a tip, or on the Web.

But there's something about Twitter. Just last week it was the hotbed of a gay-marriage hysteria that fooled even the Los Angeles Times. A month earlier, it was #amazonfail, outrage over a gay-book ban that wasn't. (Although, repetition on Twitter is so powerful that there are some who still think there was something to that.)

To a certain extent, this is because Twitter is becoming the mass internet broadcasting technology of choice. Oprah's on it! And so is every fake-news patsy with a BlackBerry or netbook.

[Teaser]

1. It's the best technology for rumor mongering ever invented

I'm in goddamn love.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Twitter is just a virtual fence and you never know what

juicy gossip your "neighbor" is sharing is true and what isn't.

[WCGreen]

3. Welcome new old journalism....

[Mythsaje]

4. Remind me again why I don't bother with Twitter?

Oh, yeah... Because I don't want to deal with THAT shit on top of everything else.

[NYC_SKP]

5. He "died" years ago... nt

[SoxFan]

6. Abe Vigoda spread this rumor