Yesterday Activision, through its official Call of Duty Twitter account, live-tweeted a narrative that suggested that a terrorist attack upon a marina in Singapore had occurred. Activision sported a stony poker face and gave no indication that it was all a promotion for the upcoming Black Ops 3 . There were no hash tags, early pictures looked legitimate, and the first post began with the words ‘BREAKING NEWS.’ Adding to the confusion, while the twitter address remained @CallofDuty, the account name had been changed to ‘Current Events Aggregate.’ The result looked rather convincing.
Over the course of an hour nineteen tweets went out, unfolding the escalation of military involvement and the declaration of a state of emergency and martial law. Most users responded by asking for a new trailer or for zombies, but quite a few people were very alarmed. Some were asking what had happened, and others said that they had turned on the news in distress to see if the reports were real.
The internet woke up this morning and decided that this was kind of a dick move. Several users are sharing a similar sentiment: “In this day and age, who thought that this would go over smoothly?” Activision has declined requests to comment on the matter.