When death becomes clickbait!

Raju Korti
I began the day reading that Dharmendra, the original macho man of Hindi cinema, had passed away. Within minutes, social media was flooded with “RIP” messages, mournful tributes, and pictures of him in his heyday. As I write this, Dharmendra thankfully remains alive, hopefully for many more years. Yet, a section of both social and mainstream media seems content to send him on a premature heavenly journey. No one really knows the truth, but that hardly matters in the viral economy of grief.

Parallelly, Jackie Chan too became a trending topic worldwide after Facebook lit up with news of his “tragic death.” A photo showing him on a hospital bed did the rounds, along with fake claims that his family had confirmed the news. It was all fabricated. Fans panicked, the media speculated, and for a few hours, the virtual world buried him alive.

What intrigues me is this perverse obsession with celebrity deaths. Why are people, especially those on social media who fancy themselves as journalists, so eager to write epitaphs before their time? Is it the thrill of “breaking news,” the hunger for attention, or the morbid delight that fame brings even in death? Many celebrities have died multiple times before they actually died. Lata Mangeshkar, Dilip Kumar, and Amitabh Bachchan have all been victims of such premature digital funerals.

The anatomy of a rumour is simple yet sinister. It feeds on fear, curiosity, and the herd mentality that governs our online interactions. It spreads through anxiety and thrives on our need to feel informed or relevant. Once unleashed, it mutates, gathering new details, false confirmations, and emotional hooks. Until it becomes indistinguishable from fact.

But rumours are not harmless chatter. They can wound reputations, distress families, and corrode public trust. When falsehoods are circulated about public institutions or leaders, they can even shake faith in governance and democracy itself. A society that thrives on fake information eventually forgets how to think critically.

India does have laws against rumour-mongering, Various sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Disaster Management Act, and the Information Technology Act prohibit spreading false information. Yet convictions remain few and far between. The lack of strict enforcement makes rumour-mongering seem like a trivial offence when in fact, it eats away at our moral fibre.

We all must die someday, but death should not become a matter of speculation and spectacle. Let us not make mortality a trending topic just because it fetches likes, clicks, and fleeting visibility. If we cannot honour life, the least we can do is respect death.