In September 2020, what looked like a news article about a Louisiana man who instantly died after using a racial slur to insult a woman went viral across social media platforms:
Did a Louisiana Man Drop Dead Moments After Calling a Woman a Racial Epithet?
Most of the posts linked to a September 5 2020 story on the website Bok Daily, bearing the same headline. It claimed:
New Orleans | A Caucasian male in his 40s was declared dead yesterday after he suddenly fell during a hostile argument with a black female.
[…]
Rodney, a passerby said he was just jogging when he stopped to observe two angry people arguing in the street. “I was not going to let him talk to a sister like that but she signaled me that she got it. He was saying all type of bull, black people are ungrateful, go back where you come from all the usual racist thing but he made a mistake when he called her a n*gga b*tch”
“The was a moment of silence and everybody froze. After what felt like 10 minutes she asked him to “say that one more time” what happened next was shocking, I have never seen anything like it. She violently threw a doll on concrete and the man dropped dead like a bag of potatoes”
The article’s final sentence read:
No one who knew the woman personally spoke to reporters nor the police.
There was no clear indication the site was satirical or junk news, other than suggested stories of a similarly questionable nature. As is often the case, the image used in the article was stolen from an unrelated article, this one published on NOLA.com in May 2018.
Moreover, the article appeared to originate on the website ihlayanews.com, which traffics exclusively in fabricated stories. Previous viral efforts from that site included a claim a hotel maid “stole sperm,” and another maintaining Oklahoma police officers shot one another while attempting to shoot a black teenager.
As we indicated on those fact checks, the site is marked as “parody news.”
Ihlaya News’ header has faint text reading “nuusparodie waarvan jy hou,” which was translated by Africa Check:
“Ihlaya News” roughly translates, from isiZulu, as “crazy person news”. The site’s tagline is “nuusparodie waarvan jy hou” — Afrikaans for “news parody that you like”.
Like other “parody news” items before it, the claim a Louisiana man mysteriously dropped dead after insulting a practitioner of Voodoo was copied to sites without any clear indication the content was satirical in nature. From there, it spread more widely, unrecognized as fake news by many of its sharers.
Article Sources +
- Louisiana man drop dead moments after calling woman a ‘Voodoo n*gga b*tch’
- Louisiana man drop dead moments after calling woman a ‘Voodoo n*gga b*tch’
- Louisiana man drop dead moments after calling woman a ‘Voodoo n*gga b*tch’
- Louisiana man drop dead moments after calling woman a ‘Voodoo n*gga b*tch’
- Man killed in St. Roch shooting Thursday morning, New Orleans police say
- Louisiana man drop-dead after he called a woman ‘Voodoo n*gga b*tch’
- Louisiana man drop-dead after he called a woman ‘Voodoo n*gga b*tch’
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