Bachelorette contestant Josh Seiter shares video saying he’s alive, Instagram account was hacked
One day after the news of Bachelorette contest Josh Seiter's death was widely reported, the reality contestant shared a new video saying he's alive
Aux News Instagram
One day after a post appeared on former Bachelorette contestant Josh Seiter’s Instagram sharing the news of his death, Seiter has shared a video saying that he is alive and that his account was hacked.
“As you can see, I am alive and well. My account was hacked. For the last 24 hours, I have been trying desperately to get into it,” Seiter says in the video uploaded Tuesday afternoon. “Somebody was playing a cruel joke and mocking my mental illness and the struggles I’ve gone through with depression and suicide attempts. I’m sorry for all the pain they caused when they made that post. I just got back into my account. I am going to do all I can with my team to try to identify who was behind this. I apologize for the confusion. I will try to update you guys as more facts come in.”
The original, now-deleted statement (via TMZ) sharing the news of Seiter’s death read, “It is with an extremely heavy heart that we share the tragic news of Joshua’s unexpected passing. As all who knew him can attest, Joshua was an incredibly bright light in an increasingly dim world.” While the post didn’t specify a cause of death, it did direct “anybody who is experiencing a mental health crisis” to a helpline. Seiter had previously been open about his struggles with mental health, sharing his story on Instagram in 2021 about surviving a suicide attempt.
This is at least the second recent instance of a celebrity death hoax being perpetuated on social media and then retracted the following day. Earlier this month, social media personality Lil Tay was erroneously reported as dead, only to say that the social media account sharing the news had been hacked.
16 Comments
Ahhh, humanity and the internet. “Let’s make fun of a guy’s mental struggles by telling everyone he’s dead! What a great idea!” Sigh. How…how do you even think of such a thing. I despair.
And America shrugs.
Did the USA care either way? Alive. Dead. Who the fuck is this ugly dude, again?
Yall need to take down or at least rewrite the story on the SAME PAGE with the erroneous death report.
Well, it looks like we know what the latest social trend for the Shittiest People in the World is – hacking celebrity accounts and posting fake death notices.Of course, if TMZ et al. weren’t so hyped on being first and actually did some due diligence and followup, we wouldn’t be going throug—HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I couldn’t even finish that with a straight face.
“Of course, if TMZ et al. weren’t so hyped on being first and actually did some due diligence and followup, we wouldn’t be going throug—HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I couldn’t even finish that with a straight face.”
Yeah, it’s definitely TMZ’s fault. *SMH*
Even without the TMZs and GMOs of the world, I’m not sure if journalistic standards are stringent enough at more reputable news organizations to not take a seemingly sincere social media update about someone’s death at its word. Or at least, not until this incident and Lil Tay’s gets them to go back to verifying with a secondary source. I look forward to seeing headlines in the future about “So and so allegedly dead, but their mom is unavailable to confirm”
I can’t speak for every outlet – only the Associated Press, whose sourcing requirements I know first-hand are intensely strict. But yeah, in the age of social media, posting AI-generated stories, and composing #content completely out of Twitter threads, it seems as though there needs to be a Come-to-Jeebus moment for the media on what professional standards should be.
That’s why the AP and BBC are the only 2 news apps on my phone.
This was a seriously messed up thing to do. That being said, maybe it will be nice for him to read all the kind things people said about him after he “died.”
duplicate
duplicate
There were no hackers, this was a publicity stunt by an attention-starved Z-list “celebrity”. I do agree that these celebrity gossip sites need to do a better job vetting their articles before publishing though, or else we’ll continue getting more and more of these assholes faking their death and blaming it on “hackers” just so they can get a few minutes in the spotlight.
Lil Tay killed The Bachelor, you say?
We can only hope