Osama Bin Laden's Death — Facebook 'Osama Bin Laden is DEAD' page wall with 357,637 likes and user comments

Osama Bin Laden's Death

2011viral eventclassic

Published September 20, 2026

The killing of al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden by U.S. Navy SEALs on May 1, 2011 triggered one of the largest social media reactions to any single news event up to that point. Within hours, Twitter, Facebook and Google Maps overflowed with jokes, photoshops and misinformation, producing several lasting internet artifacts, including remixes of the White House Situation Room photo, fake death images and viral misattributed quotes.

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Overview

The internet response to bin Laden's death mixed sincere celebration with fast, mocking humor. Common formats included tongue-in-cheek Google Maps reviews of the Abbottabad compound2, photoshopped versions of the White House Situation Room image showing Obama's national security team watching the raid2, and a photoshop of bin Laden shaking hands with the deceased rapper Tupac, spread under the title 'Bin Laden Ain't Dead, He's Chillin With 2Pac'5.

A parallel current of misinformation traveled alongside the jokes. A doctored death photo lifted from a 2009 conspiracy post ran on the front pages of the Mail, Times, Telegraph, Sun and Mirror websites before Twitter users exposed it as a composite of an older Reuters image1. Fake Mark Twain and Martin Luther King Jr. quotes about rejoicing in death also went viral. The Mark Twain line actually came from Scopes Monkey Trial lawyer Clarence Darrow3, while the MLK version began as a Facebook status by teacher Jessica Dovey whose original preface was stripped in retelling2.

Origin & Background

Platform
News broadcasts (source) / Twitter, Facebook (viral spread)
Date
2011

On May 1, 2011 at 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time, President Barack Obama announced from the White House that U.S. Special Forces had killed Osama bin Laden during a raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan5. Hours earlier, IT consultant Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual) had been live-tweeting the sound of helicopters and an explosion over Abbottabad, becoming the first person to unknowingly report the operation as it happened.

About an hour before Obama took the podium, wrestler and actor Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson posted on Twitter that a source had just told him something 'that will shock the world,' a tweet that was widely re-read after the news broke as an accidental early tip4.

How It Spread

Twitter set what its own communications team called the highest sustained rate of tweets ever recorded, peaking at 12.4 million tweets per hour on the night of the announcement2. Content delivery network Akamai measured news traffic spiking above 4.1 million page views per second across major outlets it served, including NYTimes, Reuters, BBC and USA Today5. A Facebook page titled 'Osama Bin Laden is Dead' picked up over 527,000 likes within a year of launch5.

On-air anchors and headline writers repeatedly swapped 'Obama' for 'Osama,' including a Fox 40 chyron reading 'Obama Bin Laden Dead' that was screengrabbed and mocked by Twitter user @KyleHudgins5. Within 48 hours of the raid, the fake bloodied-face death photo ran on multiple British tabloid websites before being pulled once Twitter users found the 2009 original1. The May 2 White House Flickr upload of the Situation Room, showing Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton watching the mission, quickly became one of the most viewed photos on the service and the base image for a wave of photoshop parodies2.

Timeline

2011-05-01

Abbottabad resident Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual) live-tweets helicopters and an explosion over his town, unknowingly reporting the SEAL raid.

2011-05-01

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson tweets he has been told something 'that will shock the world' roughly an hour before Obama's speech.

2011-05-01

At 11:00 p.m. ET, President Obama announces bin Laden's death; Twitter hits a record 12.4 million tweets per hour.

2011-05-02

A 2009 composite image is passed off as a bin Laden death photo by Pakistani TV and British tabloid websites, then exposed as a fake on Twitter.

2011-05-02

The White House posts the Situation Room photo to Flickr; parody photoshops begin circulating almost immediately.

2011-05-02

Misattributed Martin Luther King Jr. and Mark Twain quotes about rejoicing in an enemy's death go viral on Twitter and Facebook.

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