Earlier this morning there were reports circulating on the internet that rapper Kanye West was killed in a car accident.
The reports turned out to be a fake rumor, however news of the rapper’s apparent death spread rapidly on Twitter.
It is unknown how the rumor began although, many point to a phony report that stated that “a bizarre car crash in Los Angeles involving two luxury cars early this morning [left] rapper Kanye West dead, a second injured, a third arrested for gross vehicular manslaughter and a fourth person was detained by police.”
The fake report also went as far as to include quotes from a police officer who was at the scene.
A battle of “trending topics” began some time Tuesday night (October 20) on Twitter between users tweeting their thoughts on “RIP Kanye West” versus “Long Live Yeezy.”
The “RIP” topic quickly became the top topic on the popular Social Networking site, as users joked that West was “killed” by Taylor Swift and her VMA statuette, for example.
As the topic grew more popular, some began sharing memories and condolences about the controversial producer, believing that he had in fact passed on.
That rumor lingered until West’s on-and-off girlfriend, model Amber Rose, confirmed that he was in fact alive and well.
She also took the opportunity to chastise those how had cruely joked of Kanye’s demise.
“This ‘RIP Kanye West’ topic is not funny and its [sic] NOT TRUE,” she shared via her Twitter profile. “He has people like myself and his family that love him very much. Its[sic] 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. And 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.”
Continued discussion about the validity of claims of West’s death keep the “RIP” topic at number one on Twitter, with Google also reporting “Kanye West Dead” as a top search topic in the US early Wednesday morning.
In the last 15 minutes before this article went to print, more nearly 2,000 new tweets appeared in a search on the topic, as people joke, ask and even use the topic to promote completely unrelated items.
West garnered attention earlier this week, when he released a Spike Jonez produced short film titled We Were Once a Fairytale, a film about West trying to conquer his inner demons.
