#RIPRichardDawkins

Submission 28,042

Part of a series on Internet Death Hoaxes. [View Related Entries]

About

#RIPRichardDawkins is a hashtag used to circulate a hoax regarding the death of author Richard Dawkins, which was orchestrated by Weird Twitter users in March 2015.

Origin

On March 10th, 2015, Twitter user @famoushorse^[2] posted the tweet "What a tragic day. You will be missed :,( #RIPricharddawkins" (shown below).

Spread

Minutes later, Twitter user Jeb Lund^[3] posted a #RIPRichardDawkins tweet along with the message "Goodnight, sweet prince" (shown below).

That day, other Twitter users began posting the hashtag with jokes about the author's demise (shown below).^[9]^[10] Also on March 10th, 2015, Slymepit Forums^[4] member Ape+lust posted a comment claiming that "justice warriors" were "giddy" over the death hoax, suggesting that a "#RIPAnitaSarkeesian" hashtag be launched as a counter-joke.

On March 11th, Salon^[1] published an interview with @famoushorse, who claimed he launched the meme with Twitter user Jeb Lund out of "pure boredom with the hope of eliciting a public freak out from Dawkins." According to the Twitter analytics site Topsy,^[8] the hashtag received over 2,700 mentions in the first 24 hours (shown below). In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the Twitter death hoax, including Epoch Times,^[5] Mediaite^[6] and International Business Times.^[7]