No, Pokemon Go did not cause a major highway crash
By Jaylyn Cook
Just another reason why you can’t believe everything you see on the internet, Poké-fans.
Since its recent debut, the app Pokémon Go has sparked both excitement from fans everywhere and some wild stories about user experiences while playing – like this woman’s personal Stand By Me moment while on the hunt for a Zubat or two.
However, BuzzFeed’s Craig Silverman said that one Pokémon Go related story (that has since gone viral) shouldn’t be taken as poké-fact. An article first published on CartelPress.com claimed that a 26-year-old Massachusetts man caused a massive highway accident while attempting to catch a Pikachu with the app.
Silverman pointed out that CartelPress.com is a fake news website – a fact that proabably should have been evident from the start due to this sports article titled “Tony Romo Arrested in North Carolina For Using Men’s Bathroom.”
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However, all kinds of people fell for the joke and retweeted, shared, and posted the article on social media, using the trending hashtag #DontPokemonGoAndDrive.
While it would be equally fun and customary to knock those who bit the bait that this bootleg Onion hung in front of everyone’s faces, Silverman said that CartelPress.com also posted articles about the above mentioned woman finding a dead body and another true story about thieves using the app to lure in victims.
The website has mixed those stories in with a bevy of other fake Pokémon Go articles, so it’ll probably become a lot harder to distinguish which stories are the real deal and which aren’t. Silverman suggests checking all too-good-to-be-true stories for reputable sources linked within the text.
Or, just #DontRetweetStoriesFromCartelPress, because knowing is half the battle. (Yes, that’s a different show, but there weren’t really any Pokémon related phrases that would have worked out there. Get off my back).
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