Lil Tay's Instagram Hack, Jessica Radcliffe's Orca Attack, and Other Well-Known Death Hoaxes.
It turned out that this viral moment was just a whale of a story. After a video of a whale trainer named Jessica Radcliffe being killed by an orca went viral on social media, it was discovered that the video was a hoax and that Radcliffe is not real.
Rather, a number of sources verified that the film was produced by artificial intelligence.
While there have been actual cases of whales killing animal trainers, such as the 2010 incident in which SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau was dragged into a pool by the orca Tilikum, there have also been numerous online hoaxes that went viral.
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Consider Steve Burns as an example. There were speculations that the host of Blue's Clues had passed away after leaving the Nickelodeon children's program in the early 2000s. None of them were true, though, as Steve, who is still alive, can verify.
"Everyone thought I was dead for a while," last September, he told The New York Times. "I was kind of an urban legend. And that hurt, to be honest. And it kind of messed me up because that was happening while the internet was just sort of beginning to internet. No one, including myself, was kind of prepared for the degree of consensus that it represented. When a zillion, trillion people all think you’re dead for 15 years, it freaks you out."
Also, rumors circulated in 2023 claiming rapper Lil Tay had died.
She told TMZ at the time, "I want to make it clear that my brother and I are safe and alive, but I’m completely heartbroken, and struggling to even find the right words to say," adding that the false information had been spread via a hack on her Instagram. “It’s been a very traumatizing 24 hours. All day yesterday, I was bombarded with endless heartbreaking and tearful phone calls from loved ones all while trying to sort out this mess."
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