Regarding A Fake Kotaku Article

Regarding A Fake Kotaku Article

An article concocted to attack one of our writers and our publication as a whole several years ago continues to make the rounds, most recently in a video that’s garnered more than 500,000 views on YouTube in the last two days.

This is a fake article.

To make it clear to those not able to figure this out on their own: Kotaku has never published an article headlined: “Should Killing Female Gamers In Online Games Be Considered Rape?” Our writer, Patricia Hernandez, never wrote such a thing. It was fabricated to undermine her.

This fake article is as fake now as it has always been. It is a mean-spirited hoax, perpetuated by people who either don’t care that it is fake or can’t be bothered to check. If you have ever believed it was real, you have been duped.


  • “Why do female journalists always cry that people are attacking them when they’re attacking US for their sexist views???”

    This. This is why.

  • Kotaku Au being different from Kotaku US is an important distinction, but we still read mostly stuff from the US team, not vice-versa. Hernandez is a real talent, and a professional in the gaming industry so attacks like this should absolutely be decried and derided. I don’t agree with the heart-on-the-sleeve approach a lot of this site’s writing takes at times, but this is something else entirely.

    • I’ve enjoyed a lot of Patricia’s writing, lately. I mean, I get it… she used to cry wolf a lot (which annoyed me because the harmful thing about crying wolf is that you end up ignored when you do actually have something useful to say), but I haven’t seen any of that in years. Maybe KotakuAU is filtering out her stuff that should instead perhaps be posted to Jezebel, maybe she decided to focus on her strength – writing about games? Either way, there’s been some funny, human shit coming off that writer’s desk.

      (Doesn’t really matter what she’s been writing, though… the most strident personalities on any side of politics with their head up their ass deserves to be parodied – that’s what parody is FOR – but parody should always be clearly defined as such, not passed off as real. That’s just weak. No-one should have to defend themselves against attacks for things they haven’t said. People should only have to answer for the things that they HAVE said.)

        • According to that headline, he said “All these things” :0 Fuck I wish people would learn how to use the word literally PROPERLY

          • I believe the word literally now means both literally and figuratively due to common use. Pretty sure the Oxford Dictionary has the definition updated to that =P Interestingly that means there’s no longer a word in the English language that means just literally!

          • Really?! That’s sad if they updated it. Hearing it used in such a way is like nails down a chalkboard to me 😉

          • Um, how is this use of literally incorrect? Everything attributed to Trump in that article is sourced from actual quotes. The introductory paragraphs make this quite clear. The headline would be written differently if it was attempting to say that he literally said “all these (sic) things” as opposed to all the things referenced in the article.

          • Maybe more inelegant usage rather than outright incorrect?

            It certainly feels out of place in those sentences.

          • Like Gooky said, perhaps not outright incorrect, but it’s not the right word to use. Literally is supposed to mean a literal translation of the words, put in to action.
            Like “He drove through the round about” as opposed to “He literally drove through the round about”. They mean two entirely different things.
            The title really should have been “He actually said all these things”.

      • I’m not sure crying wolf if the correct way to put it. There was an element of that when she’d stretch to make a point but I felt like her early articles were more attempts to troll two groups with very strong beliefs against each other to generate more site traffic. I’m not sure if it was intentional or if she was just passionate about the topics but she’d take a messy situation, write a very aggressive/confrontational article and slap a clickbait title on it. The articles seemed to focus on provoking a response rather than actually raising awareness, informing people or supporting the views. She’d raise a valid point in a way that starts a flame war.
        To this day I believe that her (and a lot of other media outlets) handling of the Anita Sarkeesian situation was extremely irresponsible. I mean under the guise of rallying to support her they repeatedly threw her beliefs in the faces of people who were hostile towards them. I’m open to the idea that they had good intentions but it’s hard to ignore that they were profiting from the clashes they were starting while Anita, who was clearly unequipped to handle it all, was the one actually being placed in danger by their actions and living with the fallout.

        That said you’re right, she’s not writing the same way she used to and it’s a huge improvement. It’s hard to move on from someone making that sort of impression but I no longer see her name and think ‘oh, I wonder how she’s going to use a cause I believe in to generate outrage this time’.

        • Stopping to think about it, a lot of the old writers from back then have kinda disappeared or moved on, or severely reduced their output. No more Owen “can’t comma” Good, Tina Amini’s stuff changed to be less noticeable before she disappeared, nowhere near as much Bashcraft rubbish as we once got, not as many weird articles from Luke (although not as much of the good stuff like Total Recall either) and yeah, not as much outrage fodder from Patricia… probably others I’ve forgotten too.

          Yet it’s hard to not still think of all that being the KotakuUS trademark 😛

          • Yeah. I still think of Kotaku US as being sort of a joke even though at the very least they’ve dialled it all back. I can’t remember when it happened since it was gradual, but I’m guessing they made a conscious decision to reel all that in back when they decided to start having people dedicated to following specific games and genres, and continuing coverage post-launch/post-hype. I suspect they realised they were becoming less and less relevant due to image problems. Then again maybe they’re just older and less excitable. =P
            The only one that really bugs me now is Patrick Klepek constantly promoting his Let’s play channel. I find that really irritating but that’s more about my feelings towards professional behaviour and being unprofessional doesn’t expressly clash with this sort of website.

          • Not much in the way of 1 sentence articles these days, either.

            Unless they’re being caught on the “what gets published to KotakuAU” filter.

  • I don’t always agree with the content of Hernandez’ articles but there have been some genuinely fascinating pieces written by her that delve into topics that many people wouldn’t go anywhere near. Even with the constant stream of criticism and vitriol directed toward her (and I’ll be honest, I’ve criticised her work in the past) she still soldiers on. I’ve seen that fake article doing the rounds from time to time and it still makes my mind wobble that people believe it to be true.

    • I remember a fake article for WIRED or some magazine back in the day about Microsoft meeting with Nintendo to buy them out during the GameCube era. It was pretty funny and ended with Yamauchi yelling “Suck my little yellow balls”.

      • Thinking though that there should be internet licenses where people need to prove that they can detect bullshit to a reasonable standard without losing their collective shit before double clicking “browser of choice here”

  • I can see why some people were confused, the type of article isnt foreign to what Kotaku has posted in the past.

    • That’s the thing, judging by what Hernandez has written in the past I would easily attribute these kind of headlines to her. If I saw a Mark Serrels article with that kind of headline I would double take seeing as it’s not his style.

      To be fair though Hernandez has toned down a lot. That or I’ve simply ignored enough of her posts to not care anymore.

  • I’ve never seen this before. How awful.

    Apart from the absurd content she also doesn’t write like she’s on a dark message board.

  • I often wondered about the concept of an obvious lie. Who exactly is it benefiting?

    I worked in a Car Park that had no EFTPOS, it was cash only no credit cards, no EFTPOS, just Cash. I would tell everyone on entry it was Cash only, and yet some people would tell me they used a Credit Card yesterday or last week when it was not possible.

    Let’s say I decide to read that article, I’m not going to find it, but I suppose Kotaku saw sense and took it down right? So the only cached copy is on http://www.Aggressive Misogynist with an I suppose this is for the group of douchebags who are all about Ethics in journalism but are more than happy to DOX, lie and fabricate things to prove the people they don’t like are unethical?

    Bill Maher was right, Bullshit is the new Truth.

  • I remember seeing that fake article around the web. I think it was a couple of years ago and it was pretty believable at the time.

  • To be honest the article doesn’t look all that far out of the ordinary to what I’ve seen here before.

  • It’s funny that it’s only being addressed now, that image has been around for years; a parody of Hernandez’ articles from years back. As other comments have said, she’s lifted her game in the intervening years.

    And I do think it’s a parody, not an attack. It’s like youramishdaddy said up there: if this was attributed to most any other author, it’d be dismissed as nonsense, but because Patricia had written articles kinda similar in nature, people have been fooled by this image.

    But again, it’s years old. It’s actually stopped being relevant, but now it’s in the limelight again, which is odd.

    • That’s because it was featured in a very popular YouTube video just a few days ago. The video was entirely about the fake article being real. Christ, the video is called “THIS IS ACTUALLY REAL…” The comments are full of people who fully believe its a real article. The person who made the video has been made aware that the article is fake but has refused to retract the video.

      So why wouldn’t Kotaku want to set the record straight now? The lies are being told, and believed, now.

  • The thing that this shows me is confirmation bias at work. Anyone with even a vague understanding of the internet should know how to operate Google. Since doing so will not provide you with anything other than this picture, you should immediately smell the BS.

    Patricia has written a lot of stuff that I don’t like much, and don’t agree with, however that is totally her right. It’d be nice if people argued with what others actually say for once…

  • In all honestly its bullshit that she is bullied like this.

    But also to be fair, Patricia and a very small number of other journalists on here do publish absolute crap. That’s why people are believing this… Not because they want to hate on feminism, but because its so close to possible that people believe it.
    Patricia and Bashcraft have to be some of the weakest links in the chain. Plunkett used to be there but I see he has picked up his game a little. Please notice that’s one female vs 2 males that I say are poor journo’s

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