Irish streamer fakes getting Tears of the Kingdom early for 'much-needed' clout


Irish streamer fakes getting Tears of the Kingdom early for much-needed clout angry Link

Don't disregard the power of a grabbing headline, as they can easily mislead you. That's what happened when Irish Twitch streamer Deebeegeek shared a Nintendo Life report about him getting Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kindgom early.

The article, titled “Irish Streamer Releases Upcoming Zelda Game Early”, baited fans into believing the streamer had early access to the game.

Reading the rest of the "article", it’s clear that the article is bogus news. The faux news report claims the streamer was hunted down by "1000 Nintendo ninjas" out of the store. The article claims Deebeegeek yelled "holy shite" while running away screaming. So yes, probably easy to tell it was a joke if one kept reading.

But still, that was not what happened, with many just grabbing the headline and running away with it. Some people said "I'm muting the account" or "I hate leaks", clearly having missed on reading the rest of the article past the very first few words. In a few hours, the tweet gained traction with almost 5k likes and hundreds of retweets.

Despite the original intention being satirical, the problem was that the fake article included the name of an actual Nintendo Life author, Liam Doolan. The writer also had to go on Twitter to report that the news was fake, despite "preferring to ignore this sort of stuff".

Anthony Dickens, CEO of Hookshot Media which runs Nintendo Life, reported on Twitter how he was disappointed. "It’s okay(ish) to rip our site for your “joke” news post, but it’s unethical to leave the byline from a legitimate author of ours."

After things got out of hand, with the journalist and the website, Deebeegeek apologized saying the tweet was simply made "something for smiles on the internet". Doolan accepted the apology and he (or any of the editors) did not ask for the original tweet to be removed.

Hopefully, for some, this can be a lesson in reading news past the headline. At the very least, we are pretty sure that no one wants to be chased by an army of Nintendo ninjas. Even though their lawyers might be even scarier.

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