CYBERSPACE—News sites have had a field day—or, rather, field weekend—after numerous outlets reported that a 50-year-old former automobile maker named Joji (no last name given), living alone in his apartment, was crushed to death when his collection of porn magazines, which was estimated to weigh about six tons, fell on him after he'd had a heart attack in his living room. Also, the body wasn't discovered for six months until the guy's landlord, looking to collect back rent, entered the apartment and found him—whereupon cleaners were called in to quickly and quietly remove the body and the magazine collection.
"Porn really is bad for you!" screamed the headline from The Daily Mail, a UK "news" site whose articles have so often been proven incorrect that even Wikipedia won't cite them anymore. "Lonely Japanese man who amassed a SIX-TON pile of dirty magazines died when it collapsed on top of him ... and his body wasn't found for six months," the headline continued.
"It was unclear if he had suffered a heart attack and fallen into the stacks of magazines which had then fallen on top of him, or whether he had been crushed by the mass of paper," The Daily Mail's reporting continued. "But the cleaner said that if he was still conscious, the paper would probably have muffled his cries."
Just one problem, though: It's all horseshit—well, most of it. The guy did die from a heart attack, but he was only dead for one month before his body was discovered—lying on top of part of his collection of porn magazines, which apparently were dislodged from their shelves as he fell. According to the original report of the incident, which was published in the February 28 edition of the Nikkan Spa news site, "many times people who live and die alone ... aren’t found until bodily fluids leak through the floor onto tenants below"—except this guy's collection apparently absorbed the various liquids produced by his decomposing body, so no timely report of his death.
And what the cleaner, who was experienced in cleaning the apartments of those who die alone, actually said was, "In order not to become a shame of the deceased, we try to dispose of adult toys in the room so that the bereaved family will not be aware of it." Trouble was, one of the cleaning crew took photos of the mess, and one particularly blurry one (above) was published by Nikkan Spa—and just about everyone else who's written on the topic.
"The man was clearly a hoarder of porn magazines," noted Gizmodo's Matt Novak in debunking The Daily Mail's story. "And he died of a heart attack amongst his hoard of porn. But he wasn’t crushed by it. I guess 'Hoarder dies surrounded by porn' is a less clicky headline than 'OMG MAN LITERALLY DIES CRUSHED BY 6 TONS OF PORN.'"
And speaking of clicky headlines, how about, "Is there a gay porn star featured in the new Nintendo Switch?"
As many already know, the Nintendo Switch is the latest home video game console being sold by the prolific game manufacturer, and can be used either with a television or computer tablet, and part of its software is a photo album so that people who pause in the middle of play can take a screen shot of their position and come back to it later.
Just one problem, though: According to Joe Morgan of GayStarNews.com, the set-up screen for the photo album feature contains a line drawing (above center) about which "Eagle-eyed gamers spotted the incredible similarity to a character ... from A Midsummer Night’s Lewd Dream, a gay porno famous for ridiculous, over-the-top acting that ends with someone getting shot in the anus."
That character, known as Go, is pictured at top right, and sure, there's a vague similarity between Go's pose and the fairly generic line drawing on the photo album screen—but seriously: Does Morgan actually think that whoever is responsible for creating the set-up screen at Nintendo actually patterned this generic line drawing after a gay porn actor, when hundreds of young women in that same pose and of that general description can easily be found on a Google Images search?
Hey, we like to find those little porn Easter Eggs in mainstream material as much as the next person, but the Nintendo thing is stretching it a little bit, don't you think?
