I was idly wading through Digital Spy this evening when I saw a tweet saying that Jenson Button had been in a serious accident and to pray for him. I was confused. A quick check on his official website though and it seems as though the story was true.
I tweeted to say the story was on his official website so that it was seemingly true. You generally pretty much believe what is written on an official website although the fact that he was in a quote ‘critical’ condition but might still race tomorrow seemed way odd and that should have got the alarm bells ringing faster than they did.
However within a few mins someone has debunked the story and had found this article on the Top Gear website which showed exactly the same photo as was used in the piece on Jenson’s Official Website.
Clearly a hack job.
So first of all it taught me a lesson not to jump to conclusions – even on an official website as they are usually gospel. Secondly I didn’t question it mostly because I just didn’t think that someone would make up such a story and go to such lengths to portray it as real. Sometimes I’m just stunned what people will do.
To end apologies to all who read my tweets on the issue for a few minutes before it became clear it was a hoax. Grave error from me and lets hope we see Jenson fighting fit and surging through the field tomorrow (and hopefully a spot of rain in the race too just for fun).
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I had a bit of a heart stopping moment when,going onto Twitter late on Saturday night, I saw all these Jenson tweets. I went straight to the BBC and there was nothing there, not even an unconfirmed report, which calmed me down a bit. Thankfully, the news that it was a hoax came through pretty quickly.
But what sort of sick mind does something like this. If my blood pressure went up by a lot reading the initial story, what must it have been like for friends and family of Jenson?