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Jaden Smith Suicide Rumors Circulate Online, What’s Going On? [Video]

By Patricia Ramirez
Published on: 14:02 PST, Jul 28, 2016

It appears that the rumors of Jaden Smith committing suicide that have been circulating online over the last few days are nothing but nonsense. Fans of Jaden, son of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, got the shock of their lives when they saw links on Facebook and a variety of other sites, announcing that the teen star had taken his own life.

The false Jaden Smith suicide rumors have been so pervasive in the last week that Snopes, a site that specializes in investigating rumors and debunking viral lies, got involved in the situation. According to the Snopes investigation, the rumors of Jaden Smith’s suicide were apparently perpetuated by quite a few questionable apps, most linked to Facebook; the apps included “Gadgy Land” and “Top Feeds,” among others.

Social media users that clicked on the links, links with headlines pertaining to Jaden Smith’s alleged suicide, also had to give the app(s) in question permission to access their Facebook accounts. They were then asked to click on a bunch of new links, each purportedly to a different news story covering the alleged suicide of Jaden Smith.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45thxApnS-Y

The emotionally compromised, traumatized and ultimately lied-to Facebook users that clicked on the links to stories about Jaden Smith’s supposed suicide later discovered that the unscrupulous apps were using their Facebook feeds to perpetuate the Jaden Smith suicide hoax. Friends of people who clicked on the links and granted the apps permission to access their accounts saw the baseless rumor pop up on their Facebook feeds, courtesy of their duped friends, in the guise of vetted news article links.

As the video above illustrates, Jaden Smith’s fans didn’t find the death hoax very funny at all. Not only is it uncool to lie about the death of a beloved teen celebrity to generate a few clicks, it’s completely inappropriate to use suicide as a marketing gimmick. Ever.

For Jaden Smith’s part in all of the nonsense, the rumors of his suicide didn’t seem to faze his busy life. The newly adult son of Hollywood royalty has been incredibly busy since his 18th birthday rolled around on July 8. Jaden has been working on his first solo album for months now, and he released (or “leaked”) a music video that is believed to be the album’s first single as a birthday present to himself and the world.

It’s even been rumored that Jaden is working with Kanye West on the much-anticipated album.

Since the rumors of his suicide hit social media, Jaden Smith has been using his social media accounts with the same regularity as he usually does, something that has almost definitely been a balm to souls of his worried fans, fans who have been worried about his mental and physical well-being in the midst of the suicide rumors.

Despite barely having reached adulthood, this isn’t the first time Jaden Smith has been victimized by a death hoax. Young Jaden was rumored to have died in Switzerland way back in March of 2011. As TMZ reported, at the time of the Switzerland death rumors, Jaden Smith was only 12 years old.

This time around, the death hoaxers waited until Jaden turned 18 before accusing him of committing suicide and freaking out his legions of devoted social media fans and followers.

Indeed, in addition to not having committed suicide, Jaden Smith is in the midst of a very successful time in his young life. Despite rising to fame in the footsteps of and with a lot of help from his famous dad, Jaden has been very successful all by himself. He has a lucrative movie career under his belt, has used his gender-bending personal style to become first male face of Louis Vuitton’s women’s clothing line, is starring in an upcoming Netflix series, is about to drop his first solo album and is reportedly very happy in his relationship with the notorious Sarah Snyder.

So, Jaden fans can relax. He didn’t commit suicide. The Jaden Smith suicide rumors on social media were nothing more than the product of a cruel hoax.

[Image via Tinseltown/Shutterstock]

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