Jimmy Fallon Asks Elon Musk to Fix Death Hoax Hashtag, But He’s in No Rush to Help

Jimmy Fallon was targeted by a celebrity death hoax this week, and neither he nor Elon Musk seemed interested in correcting it. The hashtag “RIP Jimmy Fallon” was trending on Tuesday night, and Fallon posted it himself, adding: “Elon, can you fix this?” Hours later, Musk responded: “Fix what?”

It’s not clear exactly why the “RIP Jimmy Fallon” hashtag took off on Tuesday, but it seems like most people understood it to be a joke from the get-go. One of the first posts seemed to be one from an account posing as a verified account for The Tonight Show. Many people posted the hashtag alongside photos of other celebrities with a vague resemblance to Fallon, including Josh Radnor and Seth MacFarlane. As the joke picked up unexpected steam it reached some of Twitter’s trending lists, and it was only helped along by Musk’s new verification system.

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The post that may have started it all may have simply been an edited screenshot rather than an abuse of Musk’s new features. The handle “FallonTonight is the username of The Tonight Show‘s true account. However, many commenters could tell that the tweet was inauthentic on sight because it listed Fallon’s birth date as 1923. The comedian is not 99 years old.

It’s hard to tell if Fallon’s request for help from Musk was a joke or not, though Musk’s response seems like a pretty clear attempt at humor. Musk has been relatively nonchalant about the sudden surge in disinformation gag posts on the platform since he introduced “Twitter Blue” – a service by which any user can get a verification checkmark next to their name for $8 per month.

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These gags have had severe real-world effects. One of the most monumental so far was a prank where a user posted as the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Co., then tweeted: “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.” Within a day, the company’s stock price dropped dramatically and erased billions of dollars in market cap.

Musk has only said that he expects more bugs and issues to plague Twitter as his takeover continues and he tests out new features. He is still taking heavy criticism for mass layoffs in the staff. At the time of this writing, Fallon seems to be alive and well. The Tonight Show airs tonight at 11:35 p.m. ET on NBC, so the comedian may well give his thoughts on the hoax then.