Technology
Orrin Hatch tweeted at Google that he’s not dead
-
Senator Orrin Hatch tweeted at Google that he wasn’t
dead after search results suggested he had died last
September. -
Hatch’s team tweeted a series of comical posts showing
the 84-year-old senator is still alive. -
The problem seems to lie with Hatch’s Wikipedia page,
which was vandalised on Sunday. -
It’s the third time in recent months that Wikipedia
vandals have attacked Hatch’s page after they renamed him
“Sheev Palpatine” and claimed he had a flatulence
problem.
When Republican senator Orrin Hatch Googled his own name in the
early hours of Tuesday morning, he was in for a nasty shock.
According to the search engine, he had died last September.
The very-much-still-alive Hatch tweeted a screenshot this
discovery to Google on Tuesday, saying: “We might need to talk.”
His team followed up with a comical series of tweets to prove the
84-year-old politician is still alive.
The issue seems to lie with Hatch’s Wikipedia page, which briefly
stated that the senator had died in September 2017 after it was
vandalised by a rogue editor on Sunday.
Another editor fixed the issue on the same day, but the error
still showed up in Google’s “answer box,” which shows a snippet
of information on a search result from various sources such as
Wikipedia.
Business Insider/Wikipedia
It isn’t the first time Hatch’s page has been vandalised either.
Hatch is due to retire at the end of the year after a career as
the longest-serving Senate Republican. He is a staunch supporter
of Donald Trump and controversial for helping push through last
year’s tax bill.
That appears to have made him unpopular with Wikipedia editors,
who have vandalised his page several times over the past few
months.
One user changed Hatch’s name to “Sheev Palpatine” earlier this
month, a reference to one of the big bad guys in “Star Wars”
movie franchise.
Business Insider/Wikipedia
Another added the following paragraph to the “privacy” section on
Hatch’s page:
“Senator Hatch has also asked for privacy in his personal life
regarding his dehabilitating flatuation. He has suffered from
from a loose sphincter muscle for the past decade. His flatuation
has been to cause dizziness to those who inhale it, and can even
cause hullicinations. He has sought help from top flatuation
experts but has only been met with disappointed results.”
Both errors were eventually fixed.
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