Did Matthew Blair, a 47-year-old man from Boston, sue Dyson for $2.3 million after being partially emasculated by a vacuum cleaner? No, that's not true: the story was made up by a Canadian entertainment website that makes a living by publishing fictional stories often involving weird crimes, bizarre sex acts or strange accidents. It is not real.
The story originated from an article published by World News Daily Report on December 5, 2018 titled "Boston man sues Dyson for $2.3 million after being partially emasculated by vacuum cleaner" (archived here) which opened:
A Boston man is suing Dyson for $2.3 million after he was left partially emasculated from inserting his penis into a Dyson vacuum cleaner.
Matthew Blair, 47, was transported to the Boston Medical Center last month where he necessitated a 96-hour-long surgical procedure costing him $1,260,000 in medical fees with no insurance.
Surgeons were forced to remove one of Blair's testicles as well as the top section of his penis, requiring 37 stitches and leaving him practically impotent because of his inability to maintain an erection more than several seconds.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail and if they didn't click through and scroll all the way down to the disclaimer they would not have known it was not real news:
Boston man sues Dyson for $2.3 million after being partially emasculated by vacuum cleaner
A Boston man is suing Dyson for $2.3 million after he was left partially emasculated from inserting his penis into a Dyson vacuum cleaner. Matthew Blair, 47, was transported to the Boston Medical Center last month where he necessitated a 96-hour-long surgical procedure costing him $1,260,000 in med
The man in the picture illustrating the story did not sue a vacuum cleaner company, he was actually found guilty of a murder in 2014:
"Porch Shooter" Found Guilty Of Second-Degree Murder In The Death Of An Unarmed Teenager
Theodore Wafer was found guilty in a Detroit court on all counts for the death of unarmed teenager Renisha McBride. Posted on August 7, 2014, at 2:56 p.m. ET Autopsy results showed that McBride had marijuana and three times the legal limit of alcohol in her system when she died.
The website World News Daily Report is a well known satire website specialized in posting hoaxes and made up stories. The disclaimer on their website is pretty clear about that even though you have to scroll all the way down the page to find it:
World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website - even those based on real people - are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.
The Dyson story echoes an earlier hoax from the site that went viral which involved another big name brand, a big-dollar lawsuit and the use of an everyday object for sexual gratification:
Fake News: Woman Did NOT Sue Samsung For $1.8M, Cell Phone NOT Stuck Inside Her Vagina | Lead Stories
Did a woman named Salma Briant from Albuquerque sue Samsung after her phone got stuck in her lady parts when she tried to pleasure herself with the vibration mode? No, that's not true: the tale was made up by a Canadian website that specializes in inventing tales about bizarre crimes and weird sex acts for entertainment purposes.
The site is run by Janick Murray-Hall and Olivier Legault, who also run the satirical Journal de Mourréal, a satirical site spoofing the (real) Journal de Montéal. Very often their stories feature an image showing a random crazy mugshot found in a mugshot gallery on the internet or on a stock photo website superimposed over a background of flashing police lights or crime scene tape.
Articles from the site are frequently copied (sometimes even months or years later) by varous fake news websites that omit the satire disclaimer and present the information as real.
NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalist to rank the reliability of websites, describes worldnewsdailyreport.com as:
A website that publishes hoaxes and made-up stories that are often widely shared and mistaken for news.
According to NewsGuard the site does not maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability. Read their full assessment here.
We wrote about worldnewsdailyreport.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:
- Fake News: Teacher on Crystal Meth Did NOT Strip Naked in Class, Bite 2 Students
- Fake News: Texas Man Did NOT Kidnap 79 People to Anally Probe Them Disguised As An Alien
- Fake News: Man Did NOT Have Woman's Brain Transplanted and Did NOT Have Five Car Crashes in Two Weeks
- Fake News: FBI Raid at NSA Employee's Home Did NOT Reveal Over 16,000,000 'Dick Pics'
- Fake News: Man Did NOT Divorce Caucasian Wife After DNA Test Proves He Is Of 9% African descent
