I’m happy to say that, despite reports to the contrary, Jeff Goldblum, George Clooney and Rick Astley are still all alive and kicking. George Clooney is still walking around all smarmy and stubbly. Jeff Goldblum did not perish at the bottom of a cliff in Mordor. And Rick Astley was not actually found dead in a hotel room (you should all know by now that he’s never gonna let you down, he’s never gonna make you cry).

Not dead!

But you can certainly be forgiven for thinking otherwise, given all the crazy rumours zipping around Twitter last week, in the midst of all the actual crazy news that was similarly zipping around. It seems that Twitter has now replaced all other favorite means of falsely communicating celebrity deaths. And why not? It certainly allows for a much faster rate of spread for news, whether that news is real or phony. Back in the day, like say 2006, reports of Tom Hanks falling from a cliff to his death in New Zealand had to spread the old-fashioned way, from single person to single person via email.

Of course, whether or not you actually enjoy receiving tweets about celebrity deaths, you should probably avoid clicking on any links included in them. These kind of messages are gold for phishers and scammers, who try to capitalize on dramatic news to get more clicks. And, besides that, you’d have to worry about any link in any message that has anything to do with Rick Astley, for obvious reasons.