Gabriel García Márquez Killed (on Twitter) Last Night

Add legendary Columbian author Gabriel García Márquez to the list of celebrities to have fallen on the false blade of Twitter. According to The Guardian, Twitter flooded with misinformation of the author’s death after an account allegedly belonging to Italian author Umberto Eco, @UmbertoEcoOffic, posted the following.

Once more, in English.

As if that wasn’t enough to light the kindling, “Eco” posted a couple of more times.

That last one translates as “GABRIEL GARCIA MÀRQUEZ HAS DIED. HIS FAMILY AND MARIO VARGAS LLOSA [another South American author] CONFIRMED THE NEWS TO ME.”

The account alleged to be Umberto Eco isn’t a verified account and has less than 2,000 followers, which, for the man who penned Foucault’s Pendulum and The Name of the Rose, is a bit unbelievable.

A Twitter account appearing to be an authentic Garcia Marquez, @ElGabo, although not verified, replied with the following tweet:

Translation: “And if we say he died @UmbertoEcoOffic? It’s a false account.”

Regardless of the Twitter flare-up, García Márquez is alive and well as was confirmed by two separate sources close to the author. The Twitterati, along with the rest of the world, tweeted their relief that García Márquez was still among the living.

Now that García Márquez has survived his first Twitter death hoax, he joins an illustrious gallery of celebrities that have also undergone the weird death-and-resurrection phenomenon that never fails to attack the gullible micro-bloggers on the site. Other members of this exclusive club include Eddie Murphy, Fidel Castro, Justin Bieber, Usher, Jon Bon Jovi, and Soulja Boy.

Reviewing this list, why is that Twitter always false-kills guys?