The hastag #RIPJimmyFallon has gone wild across Twitter in the past 24 hours. But fans shouldn’t be fooled.
Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon isn’t actually dead. In fact, he’s alive and very much well – despite being a little bit distressed.
Rather, Fallon has is the latest victim of a widespread Twitter death hoax, with thousands of users around the world jokingly paying tribute to the “late” TV talk show host.
The hashtag began gathering momentum on Tuesday when a Twitter user tweeted that Fallon had died – but used a photo of Late Late Show host James Corden instead.
“Gone but not forgotten. Rest easy king,” the tweet, posted by user @EclipseShade69, reads.
In the hours afterwards, more than 54,000 tweets followed, facetiously paying tribute to Fallon. Along with the hashtag, users posted pictures of Jimmy Kimmel, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Matt Damon and Mike Myers.
Tweet from @EclipseShade69
Tweet from @kermiesippymilk
Tweet from @AlexCTR23
Tweet from @VileEpiphany
The trending term clearly confused the late night host, who pleaded with Twitter owner Elon Musk to intervene and “fix” the issue.
Tweet from @jimmyfallon
Fallon did not tag Mr Musk in his tweet, and it took a few hours for the Twitter-obsessed billionaire to respond. But he eventually came back with a sassy response.
“Fix what?,” he wrote.
Hours later still, Mr Musk seemingly had an actual solution.
“Sounds like a job for @CommunityNotes!” he said, referencing the social media app’s fact-check program, which recently changed names from ‘Birdwatch’.
Tweet from @elonmusk
Tweet from @elonmusk
Mr Musk responded to Fallon a third time, seemingly to poke fun at Twitter’s ‘verification for all’ debacle.
“Wait a second, how do we know you’re not an alien body snatcher pretending to be Jimmy!?” he said.
“Say something that only the real Jimmy would say.”
Tweet from @elonmusk
Fallon is yet to respond to Mr Musk’s cringeworthy jokes, though the very-much-alive host appeared on his talkshow on Monday night (local time).
And despite Fallon’s wishes, the hashtag remained in Twitter’s trending tab into Thursday afternoon (Australian time).
It seems that the social media platform’s fact-checking team had no issue with the joke, with #RIPJimmyFallon continuing to trend in Australia and worldwide.
The bizarre online fiasco came just weeks after Great Balls of Fire singer Jerry Lee Lewis was prematurely declared dead by TMZ, days before he actually died at the age of 87.
The entertainment outlet appeared to be the victim of an online fraudster that had claimed to be the rock ‘n’ roller’s official representative.
“Earlier today we were told by someone claiming to be Lewis’ rep that he had passed,” TMZ said in a statement.
“That turned out not to be the case. TMZ regrets the error.”
