Members of boy band One Direction, Niall Horan (L-R), Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Harry Styles, attend the Royal Variety Performance in support of the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund, at the Palladium Theatre in London Novembe
Members of boy band One Direction, Niall Horan (L-R), Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik and Harry Styles, attend the Royal Variety Performance in support of the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund, at the Palladium Theatre in London November 13, 2014. Reuters/Yui Mok/Pool

Hoax news involving a celebrity regularly pops up. Death hoaxes surface on the social media all the time but yesterday, a different kind of hoax nearly broke millions of hearts worldwide. One Direction fans were shocked to read a tweet from Yahoo Celebrity UK's twitter account that stated that Niall Horan has decided to leave the band.

The errant tweet was apparently the result of a hacking incident that affected the Yahoo Celebrity UK account. It reads:

Niall has left One Direction!!

— Yahoo Celebrity UK (@YahooCelebUK) December 29, 2014

The tweet, which was posted yesterday, immediately drew attention from One Direction's fans, or Directioners as they like to call themselves. The hashtag #ReasonsNiallLeftOneDirection instantly started to trend on Twitter. The hashtag helped spread the news like a wildfire. This made more fans aware about the hoax news before the administrators of the wayward account could issue a retraction,

The Yahoo Celebrity UK twitter account later said:

Morning everyone. Just so you know, Niall Horan isn't in fact leaving 1D, our account was hacked last night. We repeat, Niall isn't leaving. — Yahoo Celebrity UK (@YahooCelebUK) December 29, 2014

And it would seem that we weren't the only ones either. @sugarscape were also hacked. Sorry for any upset this has caused.

— Yahoo Celebrity UK (@YahooCelebUK) December 29, 2014


As it turns out, another showbiz website was hacked at the same time. The Sugarscape Twitter account also posted a similar story at the same time. In this version, the statement reads: "BREAKING NEWS: Niall has left One Direction" and it was followed by a series of crying emoticons.

Through its Twitter account and its website, Sugarscape also retracted the statement the following morning. They also mentioned the incident that affected Yahoo Celebrity UK and stated that they both have been victimised by the same hoax. It is unclear, however, how the perpetrators for both the incidents were same. Sugarscape also said that while their team was soundly sleeping in the bed, their account was hacked by someone they referred to as a d--khead.

Directioners can take a deep breath and relax, as Niall Horan is not going to quit the band ahead of a massive Asian tour that is scheduled to take place in early 2015. After the news turned out to be hoax , the incident sparked several hilarious Internet posts, giving theories as to why Niall would want to leave the highly successful band.

Contact the writer at: ishcaparras@yahoo.com