Horrible humans are falsely claiming that black people assaulted them at “Black Panther” showings

The hype around Marvel’s Black Pantherhas been real, especially because the film means the world finally has a mainstream black superhero — which, by the way, is long overdue. But already, there’s a group of people trying to ruin it. Online trolls are claiming they were assaulted at Black Panther showings — and even though Twitter is working hard to expose those claims as fake, it’s ridiculous that this is happening in the first place.

As BuzzFeed reported, people are tweeting that they were assaulted by black moviegoers at last night’s premiere screenings. Some pretty graphic photos of the alleged carnage were included. However, these photos were taken from totally separate events (some of which were pretty big news when they happened) and have nothing to do with the movie whatsoever. false

The good news: There are people out there working to prove how false these claims really are, and Twitter has already suspended a bunch of the accounts that posted them. Hopefully, the damage can be contained as soon as possible.

Oh, and let’s not forget that this movie literally hit theaters less than 24 hours before these claims started to surface.

Seriously?

It’s not okay to fake an assault, but it seems especially unfair that this is happening around a movie that so many people have been looking forward to for so long. Black Panther is a huge step toward inclusivity for all kinds of superhero stories, so maybe we should focus on how exciting that is instead of taking away from it? Sounds like a way better plan.