Paul McCartney dead Sad, and genuine: the Skip

Paul McCartney dead

Sad, and genuine: the Skippers tiny buddy, Bob Denver  who moreover starred, unforgettably, as Maynard G. Krebs in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis  died.

Seven years ago this week, as it turns out.

Didnt recall that? Youre not solitary: news of his death, reposted and re-tweeted breathlessly with the mandatory comments of social media mourning  such as RIP, Gilligan! Another sunder of my childhood gone etc.  broadcast via Facebook and Twitter this week as if he had unprejudiced taken his perpetuate breath a few hours earlier. F. Scott Fitzgerald (who, by the route, has been lifeless a lot longer than Bob Denver, so please dont start any rumors) famously, and wrongly, wrote that there are no second acts in American lives. Now, thanks to social media, there are incandescence acts in American deaths. If youre beneficial  and kindhearted of eminent, but not so well-known that everyone remembers where they were when they heard that you died  your death can be recirculated as news all few years, sparking a fresh spasm of mourning.

But at least poor Bob Denver is, as the Saturday Night Live crew used to say about General Franco, yet . Eddie Murphy, on the other hand, appears to be very much maintenance  although Facebook users and the Twitterati have killed him off several times recently (along with Bill Cosby, among others).

The Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby rumors are easier to vestige: they seem to spring from a totally boast news site  one that, on its pages, continual acknowledges in the good print that its articles are based on zero truth and are complete  fiction for entertainment purposes.

Of route, none of this can be blamed entirely on the Internet and social media: our generation was caught up in perhaps the biggest celebrity-death hoax ever, when we all studied the lid photo of Abbey Road and played Beatles songs backward on our record player to badge if Paul was really dead. But our original ways of communicating make these rumors easier to begin.

They also create them easier to intention, which is where we geezers and familiar-geezers come in. Generally, were more recent adopters of Facebook and Twitter than our children, grandchildren, and nieces and nephews are  so weve built up fewer wicked habits on social media. Were also, the scientists tell us, less supine to acting on impulse. So heres my plea to my fellow boomers, and our older brothers, sisters, and parents: when you read shocking news (or really fine news, or any friendly of news at all) on Facebook or Twitter, pause a upshot before you course it on. Do a little checking via elderly-fashioned media (my two favorites are The New York Times and CNN; substitute your acknowledge favorites if you relish) to sign if its being reported there. If its not, delay off. It may in fact swirl out to be true; if remembrance serves, Nora Ephrons death was upon Twitter an hour or so before the Times confirmed it. In a example like that, waiting for confirmation before reposting or re-tweeting means you wont be upon the absolute cutting margin of up-to-the-glitter coolness. But if the news turns out to be no news at every (Bob Denver, Eddie Murphy, I buried Paul) then youve earned the prerogative to remind your younger relatives and friends, once again, that  especially when it comes to social media  you cant believe everything you read.