Shane Dawson is not dead, even though the notion that he was was trending on Twitter for much of the day on April 14. The phrase was trending not because of any breaking news, but because anime fans were tweeting out the phrase along with pictures of their favorite characters.
“Shane Dawson died?? Rip lol anyways look at Deku smiling and blushing,” one user tweeted.
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This has become a popular tactic among certain fan communities. Tweeting out a phrase along with information that has nothing to do with it is a way to break Twitter's algorithm. The phrase starts trending, and then users see that it's trending and are curious what happened. They click into the topic and see that users are actually tweeting about their favorite anime characters or K-pop bands. These fans are hacking Twitter, and it's working.
