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Britney Spears Dead? Nope, Even Though The News Came From The Official Sony Twitter Account [Video]

By Patricia Ramirez
Published on: 08:14 PST, Dec 27, 2016

It’s been an epic year for celebrity deaths, so when Twitter got the news that Britney Spears was dead on December 26, people believed it, especially because the news that Britney had died was tweeted out by the official Sony Music Global Twitter account. Followers of the account got the Britney Spears “news” in a one-sentence tweet — “Britney Spears is dead by accident! We will tell you more soon” — just one day after the entertainment world was devastated by the Christmas death of George Michael.

To make the Britney Spears death hoax appear even more believable, the official Twitter account of Bob Dylan seemed to substantiate the heartbreaking Sony tweet.

“Rest in peace, Britney Spears,” tweeted someone who social media users believed to be Dylan himself (or at least one of his people).

As Entertainment Weekly reports, it didn’t take long for Britney Spears’ publicist to assure the public that Spears was not dead at all. In a statement to CNN, Adam Leber said that Britney was alive and well, adding that he was “certain” that both Sony and Dylan’s Twitter accounts had been “hacked” in order to spread the devastating misinformation that 35-year-old Spears had died.

“I assume their account has been hacked. I haven’t spoken to anyone… as of yet but I am certain their account was hacked. Britney is fine and well. There have been a few Internet clowns over the years who have made similar claims about her death, but never from the official Sony Music Twitter account.”

Indeed, having the news that Britney Spears had died come from the official Sony Twitter account made the death hoax believable, and it didn’t take long for the tweets from both the Sony and Dylan accounts to be deleted.

As BBC News reports, it appears that the Britney Spears death hoax was the result of a hack by a group called OurMine, which apparently gained access to both the official Sony and Bob Dylan Twitter accounts, at least at some point on December 26. While the group hasn’t claimed official responsibility for the widely circulated fake news that Britney Spears was dead, OurMine did hack into the Sony Music Twitter account to point out that the security was nonexistent at the time.

If OurMine was responsible for the hack and the Britney Spears death hoax, it would be the second time in just a few days that major entertainment Twitter accounts have been hacked by the group. Just days ago, the Twitter accounts of both Marvel Entertainment and Netflix U.S. were apparently hacked by the group.

Throughout its history, the OurMine group has also been accused of meddling with the Twitter accounts of some big-name CEOs, including Sundar Pichai of Google and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.

In the aftermath of her attention-grabbing death hoax, Britney Spears herself took to social media to assure the world that she’s still alive and kicking. And just to prove that she hadn’t been hacked too, Britney included a few new selfies as “proof of life.”

Along with the caption “Don’t underestimate the power of Charlie’s [Angels],” Britney Spears shared some dramatic and silly poses with her fans to assure them that she hadn’t become the latest victim of 2016’s celebrity reaper.

In response to Britney Spears’ post, some social media users called her “the queen of being alive.”

No mean feat in December of 2016.

Just one day after the Britney Spears death hoax, which came one day after the actual death of crooner George Michael, the world got the devastating (and real) news that Star Wars’ Carrie Fisher had passed away at the age of 60 following last Friday’s dramatic mid-air cardiac arrest.

While the world struggles to get through the last week of 2016 (largely renowned as a tire fire of a year), Britney Spears’ fans were thrilled to learn that she had merely been the victim of a death hoax and is still among the living.

[Featured Image by Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP Images]

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