Over the weekend, social media fawned over this new app that was like an online fight club. Rumblr, which called itself the “Tinder for fighting people,” was featured in stories on sites like Gizmodo and in newspapers like the New York Daily. Interested parties were instructed to visit their website, which promised “casualty-free casual fighting for free” once the app launched on Monday. However, it turns out that Rumblr is not real.
In a statement released on their actual website, the people behind the fake app said this was all part of a viral campaign to launch a business that has nothing to do with fighting. “Rumblr started as a portfolio project to help us launch our creative consulting agency, von Hughes,” it read. If you weren’t thorough, you probably missed this entirely. The message only appears after an attempt to use the app, the Daily Beast reports.
“We’re a team of college dropouts with backgrounds in marketing, design, and engineering. Rumblr came about organically as a funny idea amongst a group of friends, but quickly budded into an opportunity to showcase our branding skills,” the statement continued. “Within a day or two, VentureBeat picked it up as a news story and, within another day or two, it spread to over two hundred news outlets globally.”
What helped the hoax go viral were the screenshots from a fake Instagram account and people retweeting the link without actually checking the authenticity of the site. Worst of all, many forgot that hitting another person outside of your profession isn't exactly legal. Yeah, it might be a good idea to check next time.
