Leave the trend in 2022.
If you were scrolling through TikTok instead of spending time with your family over the holidays (guilty), you probably saw plenty of viral celebrity death pranks on your FYP. The trend, which involves recording someone while making up a story that their favorite celeb has passed, blew up on the social media app in late December 2022 — but not all the attention surrounding the prank has been positive. Some notable celeb reactions to TikTok’s celebrity death prank call it out for its harmful message and effects on others.
According to Know Your Meme, the earliest TikToks from the trend were posted on Dec. 24, 2022, though it’s unknown who set the trend in motion. To make the lie seem believable, the prankster acts as if they’re reading a headline about someone’s passing in real time while secretly recording the other person’s reaction. (To be clear, none of the celebrities people name in the death prank actually died, but acting as though it happened is meant to get a genuine reaction from the person being pranked.) One of the first pranks to go viral was posted by @coreyindahause on Dec. 23 in which they told someone that Donald Trump had died, and they did not take it well. It wasn’t long until more celebrity death prank “announcements” went viral, and beloved celebrities like Elton John, Barack Obama, and Jennifer Aniston were caught in the crossfire.
It must’ve been the home-for-the-holidays boredom that started this trend, but now that the holidays are over, people are beginning to realize the celebrity death prank was never funny to begin with.
Some of the blowback started when actress Angela Bassett’s son, Slater Vance, recorded his mother’s reaction as he told her in a since-deleted video that Michael B. Jordan had passed away (don’t worry — it’s just a prank). Bassett and Jordan have worked together on Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, so you can imagine her reaction was personal. The actress was so shocked she kept uttering ,“Uh-oh” and, “What?” over and over again.
Many people took issue with the prank, and it wasn’t long before the backlash became pouring in. Twitter user @NeoWokio wrote, “This trend is very stupid but most of the time it’s just a cringe random kid telling their mom that a person they’ve never met died. This is something different. This is telling your mom their friend died. Just cruel.”
Bassett’s personal connection to Jordan wasn’t the only problem with the prank. Many people pointed out that the prank probably hit too close to home for the actress after the passing of her Black Panther co-star, Chadwick Boseman, in 2020.
Not everyone needed to see Angela Bassett’s reaction to see how damaging the viral trend can be. Twitter user @conquercomics wrote on Dec 31, “Oh NOW people think the trend should stop. Sh*t has never been funny. It was too far when the stupid trend started in the first place but this is crazy.”
In a tearful video, Slater Vance apologized to Michael B. Jordan on Dec. 31, 2022, saying, “I would sincerely like to apologize … for taking part in such a harmful trend.” In the video, he admits that “taking part in a trend like this is completely disrespectful,” before clarifying he doesn’t wish any “bad ramifications of [his] actions” upon anyone involved.
“I own this was a mistake, and I hope this can be a teaching lesson to anyone else who uses social media as a tool and a source of entertainment to truly understand that your actions can have consequences that extend beyond you,” said Vance.
The celebrity reactions don’t end there: Andy Cohen also voiced has concerns with the trend on a Jan. 3 episode of Watch What Happens Live, and the talk show host got heated he actually dropped an f-bomb for the first time in the show’s 13-and-a-half-year run.
Cohen called out the viral trend during the show’s “Jackhole Of The Day” segment. “For the last two weeks, people have been sending me videos of their loved ones being told I’m dead. I have no desire to experience people’s reactions to me dying — I’m scared enough of dying in reality without having to watch bizarre simulations of it, over and over again,” Cohen said on the show.
Cohen got even more worked up in the video as he asked fans not to “make, distribute, or tag [Cohen] in any f***ing Andy Cohen death reaction videos, you freaks.” Shocking even himself, Cohen took a moment to calm down after the unexpected slip-up. He then acknowledged he appreciated the sentiment of the reactions but is so over the trend: “I’d like to thank all the TikTok moms for your tears. I was very touched, then horribly depressed. Stop now, you TikTokers.”
Producer and singer Finneas O’Connell also gave his two cents on the prank on Dec. 25, although his issues with the trend were a bit different than Cohen’s. “I haven’t laughed once at any of your videos of you telling your parents somebody died, and they didn’t actually die,” O’Connell shared on TikTok.
“It’s mean. Your parents are showing vulnerability for a brief second, and you’re laughing at them. It’s mean. Stop.” He has a point.
That same day, though, the Grammy winner stitched a video of TikToker @cmoney27 announcing to a room of family members that Tom Cruise had passed away and shared with his followers that “this one made me laugh really hard.”
Since the trend started, non-celebs have been voicing opposition to even putting thoughts like that out there when it’s not true:
TBH, it might be best to leave the celebrity death prank in 2022.
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