April Fools is here and Fortnite may have gone too far. If you logged on to the game/cultural black hole this morning, you were probably greeted by this abomination.
Did you buy the Stonks skin? pic.twitter.com/UsBiwXLxfL
— jovanmunja (@jovanmunja) April 1, 2021
His name is apparently Diamond Hanz, as if his existence alone wasn’t violence enough, and yes he’s a parody on the “stonks” meme that you’ve probably seen float around the internet for a while now, especially in light of the Gamestop stock funny business from a few months ago.
When I saw the model on Twitter I figured it was real, but didn’t think Epic actually put it in the game. I’ve really got to stop doubting Epic’s inclination to fund incredibly dumb things though, because I’m currently sitting in the Fortnite shop hovering over the buy button on the damned thing, because why not?
This isn’t the first time some viral imagery or meme has found its way to Fortnite and it certainly won’t be the last. At this point, the game’s economy is mostly fueled by them. Tons of emotes, mostly dances that had gone viral on one social platform or another, have come to Fortnite. In a lot of these instances, the dances were outright ripped from celebrities like Alfonso Ribeiro and rapper 2 Milly, which prompted lawsuits against the company in the past. So this kind of stuff isn’t entirely unprecedented, though I don’t expect a lawsuit to come from this one. It’s just god awful to look at.