BBC Story: "Why is Leslie Nielsen STILL Dead?"

[Recusant]

A day or two ago, I noticed that in the "Most Popular" sidebar on the BBC website there was a story from 2010 about the death of Leslie Nielsen. It seemed strange to me, but apparently that's because I really don't use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. If I did, I'd likely have seen more than one retweet or share or whatever about the story. Not that I'd know exactly how it happened, but I'd at least have seen it happening.

"Why is Leslie Nielsen STILL Dead?" | BBC

Leslie Nielsen isn't the only celebrity who has experienced Multiple Death Syndrome, as we're calling it.

Artist and children's TV presenter Tony Hart and Columbo actor Peter Falk have also been mourned more than once.

So why does this happen and why will it keep happening?

BBC Technology Correspondent Rory Cellan Jones says the intricacies of how stories spread on social media are complex and mysterious.

"It's no surprise that the deaths of Leslie Nielsen or Tony Hart are stories that people want to share. But they're at an interesting level - not people whose death makes the traffic stop like David Bowie or Princess Diana, but big enough in peoples' childhoods to mean something."

So if a person's celebrity is below a certain level some of their fans may have missed news of their original death. And if they randomly search to find out whatever happened to a star, they may discover a report of their hero's death, but not notice the date stamp. And so another snowball starts rolling downhill.

It's chaos theory making its presence known via social media. An entirely innocent variation of the Butterfly Effect - very different from the malicious "RIP" trolling of celebrities who are still alive.

[Continues . . .]

[Davin]

A lot of sites, for some stupid reason or another, do not put dates on their articles. I'm sure that doesn't help. Personally, not having a published date and and edit date if edited, makes me not trust the that source.

[Biggus Dickus]

I honestly didn't know Leslie had died.

[Claireliontamer]

I panicked latest night as I went on twitter and saw one of my favourite comedians trending (Billy Connolly). I know he's ill so I feared he'd died. Luckily turns out that he'd just won an award. I do think it's interesting how social media has changed death announcements though, looking through the feed it was clear I wasn't the only one who assumed he'd died.

If I see a city name trending I also now fear the worst.

[xSilverPhinx]

It's funny, just the other day my sister mentioned that Leslie Nielsen had died and the first thought that popped into my mind was "What?! Again?"