Why Scammers Faked the Death of Jonathan, the World’s Oldest Tortoise
· Vice
Celebrity death hoaxes are apparently not exclusive to humans. Jonathan, the world’s oldest known land animal, was reported to have died at the tender age of 193. The story quickly spread across social media by random users and was even picked up by major outlets, being amplified many times over.
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As the old saying goes, a lie can travel around the world before the truth can get its pants on. Though this truth seemed appropriately slow since it was about a very old tortoise that could have very believably been dead. Jonathan is not dead; he is still very much alive. Unbelievably old, incredibly slow, and looking like a living fossil. But he’s still alive, somehow.
Why Scammers Pretended the World’s Oldest Tortoise Had Died
Jonathan is a giant tortoise from the Seychelles who spent most of his life on the remote island of St. Helena. He’s blissfully unaware of what social media is and, being a tortoise, could not comment on the report himself. So, when the confusion started with a fake social media account impersonating veterinarian Joe Hollins, one of Jonathan’s previous caretakers, it seemed like it had more than enough validity to be believed.
The account was, of course, on X/Twitter, the site that used to hand out blue checkmarks to verify that the person posting was who they said they were. Now, anyone can buy them, rendering the whole system meaningless.
That seems to be exactly what happened here, as a blue checkmark-ed Joe Hollins imposter was also soliciting for cryptocurrency donations, instantly signaling that the whole thing wasn’t a joke but a con, as the real Joe Hollins himself told USA Today.
Officials on St. Helena probably poked their heads outside to see if Jonathan was alive. Once confirmed, they quickly took to the internet to correct the record. Jonathan was still alive, dead set on outliving every last one of us, possibly outliving the heat death of the universe.
As for Jonathan himself, he’s probably unfazed by all of this. He has his priorities in order. He is quite old, after all. His exact age, however, is something we can’t be too sure of. That 193 is more of an approximation than an exact calculation. No one was tracking tortoises with any official paperwork in the early 1800s. However, we do have a photograph of Jonathan, already fully grown, from 1882. That means he was probably born somewhere around 1830 or earlier.
All that is to say, Jonathan is old as heck and does not have time for your foolishness. Luckily, his caretakers can handle the PR messes on his behalf.
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