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  • 2015-11-12 (xsd:date)
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  • Will the Rumblr App Help You Find Street-Fighting Opponents? (en)
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  • In early November 2015, online rumors reported that a new app called Rumblr enabled users to arrange real-time organization of street fights. Inevitably, Rumblr was compared to hookup app Tinder (which users can employ to swipe through concise profiles of local individuals seeking dating and sex) as a Tinder for Fighting: On 9 November 2015, the Daily Mail published a provocative article about the putative app headlined 'Tinder for Fighting' App Lets You Challenge People to Brawls: Rumblr Pits Users Against Each Other in Bare-Knuckle Clashes, reporting that: In a fashion similar to the earlier hubbub over vaporware apps such as Peeple, the Daily Mail (and other news outlets) repeated verbatim statements about Rumblr from its creators without undertaking any actual verification efforts. For example, according to the New York Daily News, Rumblr was set for release at a very specific time: 5:00 PM EST on 9 November 2015: Neither of those articles mentioned the possibility of a hoax in their reports, despite red flags indicating such (including the app's sudden appearance, glaring questionable legality, and lack of public demand for arranging random street fights with any sort of regularity). No to mention that the app purportedly provided for women arranging street fights using a filter dubbed RumblrHER. In a wholly unsurprising twist, the allotted app launch time of 9 November 2015 came and went without the appearance of Rumblr. On its purported launch day, Rumblr was itself rumbled by a Fusion article positing that the non-existent app was publicized as a marketing stunt for the von Hughes consulting firm: The people behind Rumblr published a blog post admitting that the stunt was engineered to launch an unrelated marketing venture: As is often the case, the media hoaxers behind Rumblr claimed they intended to create a career-launching viral phenomenon while simultaneously maintaining an altruistic motive (in this case, the oft-present goal of raising awareness). And so long as media outlets eagerly heap free publicity on exposure-seeking grifters without corroborating their claims, no disincentive exists to dissaude them from clogging up social media fanciful tales of horrifying (but fake) app concepts. (en)
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