I don’t know how I missed this over the weekend! Apparently some bored person thought it would be funny to pretend to retweet Magic Johnson and spread false information. The problem was the picture that was attached to the tweet. Everyone really thought it came from Magic — because it is a real of photo of him — BUT the photo was from years ago, not this past weekend (you’ll understand more when you see the picture and tweet). Twitter went crazy in reaction to the tweet. I wonder if the person who started the lie could get in trouble for this?!
Photo and details after the jump…
*PHOTO & RESPONSES ABOVE IN GALLERY*
Via HP:
If you see a picture of Magic Johnson getting an injection, it’s probably not because the star, who has HIV, is donating blood.
Twitter was sent into a tizzy on Saturday when a photo of Johnson getting stuck with a needle was posted with a fake retweet stating that he was giving blood for charity.
While the picture maaaybe could have passed for a shot of the former Lakers player giving blood, it was really nothing of the sort. Thanks to BuzzFeed’s sleuthing, we found out that the origin of the pic was traced back to PBS’s 2012 documentary Endgame: AIDS In Black America. In that scene, he was just getting a treatment and his doctor was just marveling at the size of the guy’s veins.
The original twitpic has been taken down, but it’s continuing to circulate with naysayers calling out the athlete for jeopardizing people’s health.
