With COVID-19 being declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization, people are clambering for more information, and pranksters are seizing upon that desperation.
A NSFW prank has been circulating the internet. It involves a message regarding closures of the NYC subway system with a link to a "map" of the shutdowns.
In reality, the link leads to an image of a fully nude man.
One Redditor, mermicide, told the story of receiving the prank and opening the link.
*Warning: Clicking the link in his post shows the very NSFW image*
"This just happened. My little brother sent me a text a little while ago that said:"
"NYC subway system shut down. Mayor Bill DeBlasio officially closes New York City subway system beginning 3/10/2020. Outage map lists closing by station, beginning with southern Manhattan."
"*LINK* New York City officially goes into lockdown as it tries to contain this deadly virus."
"I should have learned long ago not to trust my brother, but with everything going on (and my office still not being work from home yet) I got too anxious and copied it into the #general Slack channel with an @channel notification... lucky me, Slack rendered the image and I saw that it was a LARGE NAKED BLACK MAN!!!"
"I managed to delete it, but not quickly enough... one of the VPs saw it and messaged me about it right after. Lucky for me, out of everyone at the company, he's the only one that would find this funny and he got a good laugh out of it. I pray to God that no one else saw it, especially since I've only been working here for about two months."
"I'm so fucking lucky that Slack rendered that image because otherwise there was NO CHANCE that I would have checked that link and it would have been up in the channel for much longer."
"tl;dr I sent a link to a company-wide Slack channel that I thought was to a PBS article about the NYC subway being shut down but it was actually an image of a naked black dude."
Apparently this picture has been seen by others before.
"One of my friends sent a few of us that same link but it was about a local case of Coronavirus. I knew better than to trust said friend and knew it was a joke before I even clicked it. But my other friend forwarded it to his mom without checking it. We all got a good laugh at his expense..." -FictionVent
The post taught others an important lesson...sort of.
"I'd love to say that this will probably teach me a lesson on to now read the post before clicking on a link, but knowing me I'll probably forget about it and revert back to my old ways when I view another Reddit post." -you_are_breathing
Like the coronavirus itself, the prank began to spread.
"Don't mind me, just copy pasting to have some fun of my own" -twiceforcedsucc
Our condolences if you've already been affected by the post.
"Literally this exact thing happened to me a few weeks ago with the same link and pic, someone sent it into this huge college freshman group chat I'm in with like 400 people in it and everyone freaked out." -PowerofMoses
Of course, the prank was confined solely to Reddit.
People fell for the link every time.
Countless members of the public saw something they instantly wished they hadn't.
The most unfortunate victims of the prank were at their workplace when it struck.
Always be sure to safety-check your links before sending on to friends—it's the decent thing to do!
@JenWave95/X
@gearinco/Bluesky
