The Year of the Fake Celebrity Death

I was taking a nap when the news broke that Michael Jackson died. When my brother tried to tell me the news, in my zombiefied state (oh, the irony), I thought he was kidding. As we all know, he wasn't. Naturally, I had "Black Or White" on repeat for the rest of the day.

The King of Pop's passing on June 25 of this year has begun an internet craze that is showing no sings of losing its decidedly morbid steam. Countless celebrity deaths have been reported through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook that are without gatekeepers and fact-checking practices, only to be followed a few hours or seconds later by millions of 'JK'-themed status updates from a never-ending slew of misinformed mourners.

Every celebrity from Rainn Wilson of The Office to Rick Astley of the increasingly annoying viral sensation have been the victims or perpetrators of fake death rumors. Since we've gone a month or so with no such hi-jinks, I figured we were finally done with this nonsense. This is apparently not the case.

Earlier today, a Twitter account that has been traced to Washington D.C. updated that Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley had died. Since I a fling with Sum 41's music as a sulky anti-establisment pre-teen, I was a little upset.

A local news group's Twitter then re-tweeted that he was found in his Las Vegas apartment by girlfriend Hannah Beth Merjos at 10:45 a.m. Red Light Management, who handles Sum 41's affairs, disproved the rumor later.

I'm terribly tired of this. It's tragic that people who are making waves in today's music scene are getting air time and headlines based on deaths created by hackers and pranksters with entirely too much free time. Music journalists have a responsibility to recognize the brilliant music that's being created in their bylines, after all they are called music journalists.

In closing, here are some words of musical wisdom from the always quoteable Ralph Waldo Emerson, to remind us that it should always be all about the music:

"Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence and whereto."