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Meanwhile, the backlash on social media was growing. Disability advocates like Able Gamer's Steven Spohn were discussing the incident and asking Grinding Gear to investigate and overturn the ban. Other gaming outlets like TheGamer and GameRant also published stories on the original Reddit thread, increasing the lie's visibility POE currency trade . But without any more leads, there was nothing Grinding Gear could do.
Then, late last night, poelegalthrowaway00 posted to the Path of Exile subreddit and admitted the whole thing was made up.
Path of Exile, like most ARPGs, requires quick reflexes and a lot of clicking on things. (Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)
In that second post (which was also soon deleted along with the original legal advice thread), poelegalthrowaway00 claimed to be "an educator" who was teaching their class about "how easy it [is] to manipulate public opinion and discourse through social media."
It was a bizarre and unexpected twist, made even more weird by poelegalthrowaway00's attempts to justify why they'd spread lies or how redditors should have seen through the bullshit. As if people don't already know or understand that it's pretty easy to make stuff up on the internet. And why pick Path of Exile's community, of all places?
Minutes after that second post was made, however, it was edited and the original message was replaced by someone claiming to have hacked poelegalthrowaway00's Reddit account using their security questions. A few minutes after that, the post was deleted entirely—though not before people grabbed screen captures of it.
Poelegalthrowaway00's confession that they're really a teacher seems just as dubious as their original thread. The only thing we know for certain is that this was all a pointless and insensitive hoax POE goods .
"Honestly I feel kind of sick about all of this," Wilson wrote in a follow-up email to me. "It's undermining the legitimacy of real issues and the Twitter thread caused us some pretty bad PR damage."
