A girl on TikTok woke up to learn that she had been falsely identified on social media as one of the deceased victims of the horrific crowd crush incident during Travis Scott’s set at Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas last weekend.
On the 6th of November, Amelia Nguyen (@amelynyugen) woke up to a tweet with a photo of her face claiming that she was the first confirmed victim who died after attending the Astroworld Festival where at least eight people died and several were hospitalised.
“Amelia Nguyen is the first to be announced dead today at St. Andrews Hospital after the Astroworld festival,” it read. As of publishing, it appears the tweet is deleted but at the time she published her TikTok about this story, it had 30,000 retweets and 74,000 likes.
Shortly afterward, she started receiving bizarre messages about her “death” from randoms on the internet. One person, who she appears to have never interacted with over Instagram before this incident, tagged and shared a photo of her on their Instagram Story.
“Rest In Peace,” they wrote. “She died in the Astro festival.”
Elsewhere, a 15-year-old boy messaged her hoping to get in touch with her parents and claimed his school had started a GoFundMe page in their daughter’s honour.
“I know your daughter has passed,” he said.
“If you have her phone I am sorry for the loss. My high school in Toronto has made a GoFundMe for your daughter.”
Bizarrely, according to the screenshot of their chat over DMs via Nguyen’s TikTok, it appears he tried to call her prior to the message and the two shared a nearly 17-minute long conversation??? Lord knows what was said there but he also shared a mirror selfie of Amelia’s on his Instagram grid with a caption identifying her age.
@amelynguyen woke up and the world pronounced me dead
Over on TikTok, a few people made TikToks tributing her after her sudden “death” and asking people to boost the original tweet.
https://www.tiktok.com/@jennynijow/video/7028075529634991361
https://www.tiktok.com/@jennynijow/video/7028424989590293761
Honestly, as wild as this is, this story is another example of how social media can so violently spread misinformation in times of crisis. I feel like our generation has this innate desire to believe anything viral on the internet, partly because we spend so much time on it.
It’s a good lesson to always fact-check things you see online and be skeptical, but also suggests people might be too indoctrinated in how we respond to these types of things to even question them.
I mean, surely someone who knows this girl was in touch with her during last weekend and would’ve said, “hey, uh, my friend ain’t dead”.
Earlier this week, an Astroworld attendee filed a lawsuit against Travis Scott and Astroworld organisers ScoreMore and Live Nation over “gross negligence”.
