Daily Currant Writer Found Dead after Writing Sochi Engineer Found Dead Story

By PF Wilson

The story spread like wildfire across the Internet this past weekend, after news broke Saturday morning that the engineer responsible for the glitch during the Winter Olympic opening ceremony in Sochi had been found dead.

After one of five snowflakes failed to turn into the final Olympic ring, the Russian hosts were red-faced, as it were. Then Saturday morning, the Daily Currant ran the piece about the engineer. For almost a day the Internet and social media in particular, were abuzz with the bazaar tale of how he met a gruesome end after apparently embarrassing his homeland. However, it all turned out to be hoax, perpetrated by the Daily Currant; a hoax that went viral.

Many Internet experts, social media gurus, and garden-variety know-it-alls snickered about how the public was once again hood-winked  by a hoax news story. Few were surprised though, as people across the web constantly fall for made up news stories from The Onion, Daily Currant, Ross Rants, and Fox News.

Russian officials were not amused by the hoax though, and insist that the real engineer is alive and well and working on a special project in Barnaul, Siberia. However, the writer who penned the fake news story was found dead Sunday night. As word spread out across the Internet of the writer’s demise, local law enforcement said no one had contacted them for details, and they were pretty sure that no such incident had actually taken place. Still many speculated about the writer’s possible death.

A spokesman for Russia’s satirical newspaper The Radish said it demonstrates the danger of poking fun at the wrong things. “But the Russian people took no offense at the story about the engineer. We have great sense of humor. We laugh at the same things you do. You laugh at President Obama,” he said and then paused before adding: “We laugh at President Obama.” He then vehemently insisted that the Russians were not involved in the writer’s death. Two Russian nationals were questioned a few blocks from the Daily Currant’s headquarters, but were released after telling the FBI that they knew nothing about a fake news story, or satirical news website, and were merely looking for “moose and squirrel.”

Pattie Wilson also reported on this story.