The social media rumors of Jimmy Fallon’s demise have been greatly exaggerated as The Tonight Show tackled Twitter’s scuttlebutt head-on Wednesday night’s episode.
Fallon opened the show with a revivalist gospel choir singing “he’s alive!,” with the late night host responding in song with the refrain, “I’m alive!”
He returned to the subject in his monologue. “I don’t know if you guys saw this but for the last 24 hours, #RIPJimmyFallon has been trending on Twitter,” Fallon said. “Even worse, when they heard I died, Ticketmaster kicked me out of line for Taylor Swift tickets,” he joked referring to the recent debacle over Swift tour tickets.
He continued, “Right after it happened, though, I was so touched that NBC immediately called and asked, ‘How can we turn this into another Law & Order?’”
Fallon then talked about his attempts to refute the fake news on social media. “#RIPJimmyFallon was the No. 2 trend on Twitter. I tried everything I could to bump it down. I even tried the hashtag #RIPPEDJimmyFallon. I thought that would maybe help,” he said as he showed a picture of his head superimposed on the body of Ryan Gosling playing Ken in the Barbie movie.
On Tuesday, the more mischief-making element on Twitter launched #RIPJimmyFallon, with users posting the hashtag often with a picture of someone other than Fallon.
The Tonight Show host tried to combat the fake news and tweeted at Twitter’s CEO Elon Musk for help to take down the hashtag. Fallon tweeted, “Elon, can you fix this? #RIPJimmyFallon.” Musk, who has taken a highly personal approach to content moderation since he took over Twitter, responded to Fallon’s tweet Wednesday morning with “Fix what?”
