Former porn star Sasha Grey would just like to make sure we’re all clear on the fact that she’s not dead. Contrary to the reports of some dicey-looking Internet memes, she also wasn’t working as a nurse for the Russian Army, and has never—not even once—been captured by Ukrainian soldiers and then brutally murdered. She’s fine.
The rumor of Grey’s untimely demise originated on a forum known as Dvach, which Mediaite describes as “Eastern Europe’s version of 4chan.” The idea was evidently to cook up the most awful story possible, to see if pro-Russian separatists bought it, even though with some rather direct clues that it was a hoax (“Serova”, as the Moscow Times noted, is similar to the Russian word for “gray.”)
Grey was understandably not happy to find her image being attached to such a dumb, disturbing prank, especially at a time when lots of real people are dying and being displaced in the conflict. In a series of exasperated tweets yesterday, she cleared things up:
Grey also pointed out that after she tweeted “Stay strong, Kiev!” in 2013, she was labeled anti-Russian:
Please stop inserting Sasha Grey into your weird propaganda and/or poorly-conceived pranks, everyone.
Sasha Grey appears with a blurred Elijah Wood on a talk show in Madrid, Spain, June 2014. Photo via AP
