‘Jon Bon Jovi is dead’ hoaxer: ‘I just kind of took the liberty’
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Jon Bon Jovi was dead, did you hear? If you did, you experienced the hoax that Pennsylvania musician Jeffrey Goho has admitted he started.
Goho told the Asbury Park Press on Tuesday he’d been peeved that Bon Jovi appeared to be spending his time everywhere but behind a microphone. So what better way to encourage a guy to leave the restaurant business and the movie business alone than by tweeting that he’s, you know, dead.
‘Long story short, I was talking to my band members on their down time, and we got so worked up in the conversation, I just kind of took the liberty and started [the rumor], because I was so irritated,’ Goho told the Asbury Park Press.
He started the rumor in mid-December on a friend’s Twitter account, he said, or on a fake account, depending on whom you believe. And, gosh, who expected all that retweeting (the story of the hoax was popping for days here at latimes.com -- and along the way, one wee blog even picked up The Times’ Michael Jackson death story and changed some words around to make it about Bon Jovi, according to our L.A. Now pals).
Bon Jovi himself poked repeated fun at the rumor at a Dec. 19 concert in New Jersey, referring to it several times and pretending to take frantic phone calls from friends who’d heard the news, the Star-Ledger reported. That after posting a ‘proof of life’-style photo in which he declared, ‘Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey.’
‘I never really thought it would get out of Pennsylvania,’ said Goho, who at age 30 is apparently unclear about how the Internet doesn’t pay much attention to state lines. Surprisingly (not), he said he was ‘slammed’ with hate tweets within 24 hours of posting the made-up-news-that-wasn’t-news.
But after some reflection, he said, he realized Bon Jovi was, through his non-musical business endeavors, actually doing good things that provided more venues where guys like him and his Minutia bandmates could play.
‘I was quite wrong,’ Goho said.
We think Bill Cosby would agree wholeheartedly. Not to mention all these people who reportedly died last December.
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-- Christie D’Zurilla
Twitter.com/dzurillaville
