Kevin Sorbo, actor best known for playing Hercules in the 1990’s television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, has been rumored to have passed away. Is this sad rumor true?
It all originates from a new change on X — the app formerly known as “Twitter” — which has unintentionally led to the rumor of Kevin Sorbo’s passing.
Earlier today, a parody account on X shared an article from the highly regarded Variety online magazine, with a headline that read Sorbo had died. However, the article is actually about Sorbo’s role in the movie Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist, and was published earlier this year in January.
To be clear, Kevin Sorbo has not passed away.
A link-formatting change on X made for the Sorbo confusion, as it turns out; Elon Musk’s apparent decision that when linking an article, the accurate headline no longer needs to be automatically generated on the post. This apparently changed yesterday, so that users no longer see the linked article’s headline, but rather see the header photo linked to the article, and where that article is from. This means that no one would know what the headline is, unless the one posting it actually types in the headline. The parody account took advantage of just that loophole, which has (presumably unintentionally) granted users the freedom to insert whatever headline they want.
As we know, many users on social media will take full advantage of such freedom just for the sake of trolling. Social media can be an outright cruel place, and Elon’s changes — which severely lack in foresight — only contribute to such cruelty.
Kevin Sorbo is not dead, but no doubt that someone on X will post this very article with a headline that claims otherwise.