Fighting app Rumblr fools the Internet and media

A website purporting to offer an app that allows people to arrange fights with each other has managed to fool many tech blogs and mainstream media.

The first rule of Rumblr, don’t talk about Rumblr. Because it’s not a real thing.

Despite what you may have heard in the press recently (yes Sky News, that means you) an app that purports to offer a way for users to find local people to fight is actually just a marketing stunt for an agency named von Hughes.

The app called itself Rumblr. A way for people to search for users looking for a brawl. On the app, users could search, connect and arrange fights. The slogan of the app was ”Casualty-free casual fighting for free”.

Such an app inevitably caused a lot of concern, since, from a marketing perspective, it was a disaster waiting to happen. From a legal perspective, dubious at best. Many speculated on how quickly the first Rumblr-related death would occur, others on how many deaths or serious injuries it would have taken for such an app to be taken down. Somehow we didn’t see Google or Apple allowing the app on their marketplaces.

Sky News, amongst many others, fell for the hoax.

Thankfully, such questions are redundant. It was all a rather successful marketing stunt. Von Hughes made a statement on their website (below) debunking their own creation, but not before plenty of mainstream media and tech blogs fell hook line and sinker (above). You could also reach the von Hughes statement by interacting with the app where you are first taken to a fake conversation with your matched “fighter” before being forwarded to the von Hughes website.

From the site –

Rumblr started as a portfolio project to help us launch our creative consulting agency, von Hughes. We’re a fun-loving, passionate team with backgrounds in marketing, design, and engineering. Rumblr originally came about organically as a funny idea, but quickly became something much bigger than that. Within a day or two, Rumblr got picked it up by a notable tech news source and, within another day or two, it spread to dozens and dozens of news outlets globally. We took this as an opportunity and during this whole time we worked tirelessly, replying to hundreds of tweets one by one, growing the (fictional) brand, getting press, and ultimately developing the ‘beta’ web version that you see today. It’s been a wild ride, and in turn, Rumblr became a relevant topic in multiple countries, cultures, and languages. We hope it was as fun for you to keep up as it was for us to work on.

We understand that some of you were genuinely looking forward to using an app like Rumblr, and we’re sorry to disappoint. However, if you still are truly wishing to release some built-up angst, consider fighting more pressing issues such as gang violence, domestic abuse, and at-risk youth culture.

Fight on,
Matt, Jack, & Andrew

It’s a good example of how to fool the Internet. The fake story first targeted tech blogs like VentureBeat who appeared to completely fall for the ruse – yet later updated their article about Rumblr claiming that “unsurprisingly” the story turned out to be a hoax. One has to wonder that if VentureBeat were so unsurprised by the revelation then why did the clearly fall for it?

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Other sites fell for it. Sky. The Independent. Complex. Metro. Others showed a little skepticism, before finally von Hughes revealed the hoax, leaving behind a plethora of red-faced journalists, who once again have all been tricked by the Internet.

The Rumblr team were reportedly getting hundreds of tweets and thousands of people were alleged to have been interested. A worrying statistic on more than one level, it should be noted.

So for all those Fight Club fans of the 21st century, if you really want to find people to fight with, you’re going to have to do it another way. But you shouldn’t. Fighting is bad.
You’ve been told!