Twitter Roils with Fake "Britney Spears Dead" Tweet

It's been a terrible week for celebrity deaths, with Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and Billy Mays all dying. What's this? A tweet about Britney Spears on her feed? She's dead? Say it's not so!

It's not so. Although the original "Britney Spears dead" tweet (since deleted) was retweeted numerous times, spreading virally, it was nothing more than a fake. Still, sites such as TweetMeme still have the tweet archived, showing the evidence.

In fact, some said it smelled like a hack, and it was, though it's unclear exactly how the account was hacked. This Britney Spears story is, unfortunately, reminiscent of the stories that Jeff Goldblum was dead, which circulated on Thursday, the day that Michael Jackson died.

Eerily, when Britney Spears was in her "serious meltdown" phase in 2007 and 2008, stories emerged such as AP already having penned her obituary. It's not unusual for a celebrity, but certainly unusual for one as young as Spears.

A sick website even emerged during that period, one which promised a PS3 to the person who successfully predicted the day that Britney Spears died.