A new death hoax has made its way online, based on a shocking headline that Rowan Atkinson, best known for his roles in Mr. Bean and Johnny English, is dead after committing suicide.
And if you look at the screengrab of the death hoax above, it erroneously claimed that Atkinson was born in 1995, making him 21 years old today. The headline, contrasting its graphic, said that the actor was 58. But Wikipedia noted that Atkinson was born on January 6, 1955, making him 61 today.
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However, all these inconsistencies in the claims about the actor’s demise did not stop the false story from going viral on social media, shocking people and causing them to offer their condolences to the actor’s family.
Those who don’t pay that much attention to detail might be fooled into believing that this piece of news is true because the headline even bears the name of a British broadcasting company BBC.
This is not the first time that Atkinson has fallen victim to a cruel death hoax, though.
According to fact-checking site Snopes, a similar hoax with similar details about Atkinson’s death also surfaced in 2013. It just made its comeback this July 2016. And just like before, if you click on the link, expecting you’ll find more details about the actor’s death, you will be redirected to another website that will ask for your “public profile” on Facebook before letting you continue, or something like that. Snopes calls it a “clickjacking” scam.
Inquisitr has more details about the old hoax concerning the actor. Three years ago, a site called Linkbeef, which is well associated with posting death hoax stories about celebrities, also published a story about Atkinson. It claimed that the actor committed suicide after batting with severe depression. But one glaring mistake in the article is that it identified Atkinson as a “US actor” when he is clearly British.
While Atkinson, a known car enthusiast, figured in car crashes before, he is still very much alive!
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