Did Julio Smith, a 21-year old man kill his 18-year old Friend Paulo John over losing a match in the video game Fortnite? And did he do this by stabbing him no less than 63 times with a knife? Fortunately the whole things is made up, not true and totally fake.
The hoax originated on satirical website 8shit.net in an article published on March 19, 2018 titled "Man Stabs His Friend 63 Times For Making Them Lose A Fortnite Match" (archived here) which opened:
Julio Smith, a 21-year old man has killed his 18-year old friend Paulo John for making them lose a match in the famous game Fornite. Yesterday, Paulo brought his laptop to Julio's house so they could play Fornite together and create winning strategies. After playing a very important match, when they were about to win, Paulo made a mistake that costed them the match.
According to Julio, Paulo said that "his nose was itching", and that's why he made the mistake. Nevertheless, Julio reached a knife and ended Paulo's life by stabbing him 63 times.
Fortnite is a co-op sandbox survival game developed by Epic Games and People Can Fly which was published in the summer of 2017. According to Wikipedia "Fortnite has up to four players cooperating on various missions on randomly-generated maps to collect resources, build fortifications around defensive objectives".
Although arguments over video games can sometimes lead to violence (like the unfortunately real recent tragedy where a 9-year-old boy shot and killed his 13-year old sister over a video game controller) in this case the entire story is not based in reality.
Users on social media who only saw this title, description and thumbnail might have confused the story for a real news report however:
Man Stabs His Friend 63 Times For Making Them Lose A Fortnite Match
"We lost the match because of him. He had it well deserved!", said the accused. Julio Smith, a 21-year old man has killed his 18-year old friend Paulo John for making them lose a match in the famous game Fornite. Yesterday, Paulo brought his laptop to Julio's house so they could play Fornite together and [...]
But 8shit.net carries a disclaimer on its about page that reads:
8Shit is a satire and humor website.
It contains cutting edge satire on a diverse range of topics.
The website publishes fake news, shocking rumors and reports with incisive sarcasm, and humor.
We also post crazy real news which often sounds too good to be true.
And an additional disclaimer in the footer of every page:
8Shit is a satire news and humor website. All its content is fiction (except those posts under the "serious" category) and shouldn't be taken as real. All references, names and marks or institutions in this website are used as contextual elements, like in any novel or science-fiction story.
This particular post was made in the "Society" section so that means it wasn't real.
