Music

Madonna Is Trending Because People Think She, Not Diego Maradona, Is Dead

Madonna, as far as we know, is not dead.

by Jared Richards  26 November 2020
Fans mistake Diego Maradona for Madonna, think pop star is dead

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World-class Argentinian football player Diego Maradona died overnight aged 60, sending both his country and fans worldwide into mourning as they remember the legacy of one of the sport’s greatest stars, who used his position to protest imperialism and inequality.

It also sent thousands into mourning for Madonna, because their names are slightly similar.

Alongside Maradona, Madonna began to trend on Twitter as people misread the footballer’s name — and as tweets began circulating about ‘RIP Madonna’, others began to search for the news of her death, as per the sharp spike on Google Trends.

Of course, Madonna’s name is now trending mostly for joke tweets about her death, but, there’s a lot of sincere ‘RIP Madonna queen of pop’ posts going around, too — or, at the very least, some very scared fans for a few seconds before they realise what’s happening. And naturally, millennials are all to blame.

Madonna, for her part, has not as of writing confirmed that the reports of her death are greatly exaggerated.

Most recently, Madonna appeared on Dua Lipa’s remix of Future Notalgia track ‘Levitating’, also featuring Missy Elliott and The Blessed Madonna. To celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Confessions On A Dance Floor, last week Madonna released a HQ version of her ‘Hung Up’ music video.

Find some ‘RIP Madonna’ posts below. For a tribute to Maradona, the Guardian has surmised why his life meant so much to Argentinians, and The Nation has looked at Maradona’s life-long advocacy for a fairer world.

Photo Credit: Diego Maradona holding the FIFA World Cup trophy after winning the final to West Germany, 1986. Photo via WikiMedia, under public domain use.