No, R. Kelly—for the trillionth time—has not escaped from prison.
Over the past day or so, you may have noticed an uptick in X posts claiming that the “I Believe I Can Fly” artist has managed a prison break. To be clear, he has not.
Per online inmate listings, Kelly remains incarcerated at a federal prison facility in North Carolina following multiple convictions, production of child pornography among them. As of this writing, a release date is listed of Dec. 21, 2045.
While it wasn’t clear where the latest fake prison escape claim originated, a likely source is Daily Noud, a parody account on X. Despite the parody label of the account, and no doubt due to a detrimental dearth of critical thinking that has come to define the 2020s, the claim has been repeated multiple times on social media.
Incredibly, this isn’t the first time this exact falsehood has made the rounds on social media. In 2022, for example, a depressingly large number of people fell for a similarly stupid claim.
Abject bullshit has proliferated on social media in recent years, leading to news writers being tasked with putting together numerous debunking-focused explainers.
Just last month, we had to make it clear that the world wasn’t going to lose gravity thanks to the spread of a very dumb conspiracy theory. In short, a loss of gravity is not going to happen.