I wrote a story today about a Twitter trend about troubled actor Charlie Sheen, as people wondered if he had died in a snowboarding accident in the Swiss mountains.

I normally wouldn't have written such a piece but I couldn't ignore it, I felt, because many of the Twitter questions stemmed from a Detroit radio station's questioning of the information. They didn't report it as fact, but they talked about it and that led to other people talking about it. I felt something needed to be said to clear it up and I quoted some of the better Tweets about the issue.

Normally, I wouldn't write about a false rumor because then you're promoting the rumor, and these Internet death hoaxes aren't any fun at all. They make it so can't report that someone died, not as a news agency but simply as a person wanting to pass along a RIP to someone.

But something I've noticed, if I see something not in the news trending, I wonder if they are dead. That happened with Terry Crews, the actor and former football player. He was trending and I hadn't heard of anything he's doing just today.

katerz1 tweeted:

I love Terry Crews and I got askeered when I saw he was trending cuz I thought he was boo-boo dead. :-\ #NotDead #Yay

Exactly, katerz1, exactly.

I also think they die if I heard a block of songs on the radio (except for Tuesday on the WRIF). Then it'll turn out to be a block party weekend and I say, ahhh, Keith still lives.