Is Elon Musk buying Fortnite? Answered

gamepur.com:

Every six months or so, a rumor starts sweeping around the internet that the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, intends to buy Fortnite purely so he can then delete it from existence. This rumor is not based on leaked information, it did not come from any reliable source, and it is certainly not true. It’s rooted in a meme first created as a joke back in October 2018.

On October 19, 2018 a Reddit user named The-shadowxz posted a screenshot of a MarketWatch news story headlined “Elon Musk buys Fortnite and deletes it” in the /r/funny subreddit. The name Mike Murphy appeared on the screenshot. Mike Murphy is a real MarketWatch contributor, but he did not write this story, because the story never existed. The screenshot was created, presumably in Photoshop, as a joke.

Related: How does Fortnite make money? Answered

It was quite a funny joke, though, and proved very popular, gaining 11,000 points and 560 comments on Reddit in just three weeks. It’s popularity was boosted significantly by Elon Musk himself who, the day after it was first posted, played along with the joke on Twitter, posting the fake screenshot and commenting “Had to been done ur welcome”. This suggests that Musk agreed with the spirit of the quote used a subheader on the fake article, “I had to save these kids from eternal virginity”, but it doesn’t mean he ever really said it.

The Elon Musk Fortnite meme, like all popular memes, spawned numerous imitations and variants, and it never really went away. Every now and again, it comes flying back, usually as a fan-panicking rumor, and not as a joke. For example, during the Fornite Black Hole event of October 2019, during which all official Fortnite channels went