Did Mookie Betts or other athletes say "If you want people to speak kindly about you after you're gone, then you should speak kindly while you're alive." in relation to the shooting of Charlie Kirk? No, that's not true: The fake quote, also attributed online to Bryce Harper, Mike Norvell, Jalen Hurts, Brock Purdy, Julian Sayin, Aaron Judge, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's daughter Ava, Atticus Sappington, C.J. Stroud and even Stephen Colbert was being spread by a series of Facebook pages and websites being run by people from Vietnam. The quote did not appear on his Instagram page as the story claimed and there were other details in it that didn't match reality either.
The claim about Betts appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) published by a page named "Dodgers Faithful" on September 15, 2025. It read:
🔥🔥 BREAKING NEWS 🔥🔥
Mookie Betts, star of the Los Angeles Dodgers, has doubled down on his remarks about the late Charlie Kirk. He had previously written on his Instagram story: "If you want people to speak kindly about you after you're gone, then you should speak kindly while you're alive."
After receiving backlash, Betts responded with a follow-up: "And I stand by this. Be kind -- now more than ever."
This is what the image in the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Sep 17 12:41:34 2025 UTC)
The story linked to an article (archived here) titled "Breakiпg News: Mookie Betts Doυbles Dowп After Coпtroversial Remarks oп the Late Charlie Kirk" on a website named "N". Note that the content on the site that published the story frequently swaps out letters from the Roman alphabet for Cyrillic or Greek letters that visually look roughly identical, a technique frequently used to obfuscate plagiarism or evade moderation, something they did in this headline as well if you look closely at the letter "n" or "u" in some words.
The story claimed Betts wrote following message on his Instagram profile (archived here) in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death:
"If you want people to speak kindly about you after you're gone, then you should speak kindly while you're alive."
And it also said he "doubled down" and later posted:
"And I stand by this. Be kind - now more than ever."
However when Lead Stories reviewed the account there were no such messages on it in any of the posts since Kirk died on September 10, 2025.
The story also claimed that in response to the supposed quote:
By evening, hashtags like #MookieBetts, #BeKindNow, and #CharlieKirk were trending nationwide.
However the hashtag #BeKindNow has not been used on X since Kirk's death as a search done at the time of writing (archived here) shows.
According to the page transparency tab of the Dodgers Faithful Facebook page (archived here), it is primarily managed by people from Vietnam:
(Image source: page transparency tab of Dodgers Faithful Facebook page.)
Lead Stories searched for part of the quote in combination with "Charlie Kirk" on Facebook and found dozens of quasi-identical posts (archived here) ascribing the quote to various other people, including Bryce Harper, Mike Norvell, Jalen Hurts, Brock Purdy, Julian Sayin, Aaron Judge, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's daughter Ava, Atticus Sappington, C.J. Stroud and even Stephen Colbert.
(Image source: animation created by Lead Stories based on Facebook search.)
Spam networks
The case is very similar to other recent hoaxes Lead Stories has written about involving rumors being spread about celebrities supposedly honoring Kirk or athletes allegedly donating money to his family. In those cases the AI-generated stories were spread using foreign-controlled Facebook pages and anonymously registered websites.
