The 'Tinder for fighting' app Rumblr is actually just a marketing stunt

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Rumblr fighting app

Rumblr

Screenshots of what Rumblr claims is its iOS app.

Lots of people are outraged over a new app that launches today called "Rumblr." The app's website claims that it's a "Tinder for fighting" that can be used to set up fist fights with other users.

People are understandably outraged, and technology journalists have written bemused articles about Rumblr. But there's one problem: The app doesn't exist.

Rumblr was created by developer Jack Kim and marketing executive Matt Henderson as a viral stunt.

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There's no evidence that an iOS app ever existed, and the pair's claim that Apple had rejected their app from the App Store appears to be part of the hoax. Apple has not yet responded to Business Insider's questions about the Rumblr app.

The screenshots that have been published by media outlets today as real appear to be mock-ups of the fake app. 

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Business Insider spoke to someone in the New York startup scene who knows one of the hoaxers, and he told us that they were secretly amazed that people had fallen for the stunt.

The Rumblr hoaxers even managed to fool publications into thinking that an app actually exists. In an interview with New York Daily News they claimed to have "raised relatively substantial funding from private American investors."

VentureBeat was the first publication to write up the Rumblr website. It said that the app "could be awaiting approval. The website lets people sign up on a waiting list" and mentioned that there's no sign of monetisation yet.

The app has gone on to be covered by publications including the New York Daily News, The IndependentThe Daily MailViceMetro, The Daily Mirror, Digital Spy, Complex, and The Daily Star.

The site's cofounders have even given video interviews to small TV stations in the US. Here's a video from a station in Tucson, Arizona:

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Kim and Henderson continue to deny that Rumblr is fake, and told Business Insider that Apple had rejected the company's iOS app, so they had stayed up overnight creating a web version of it that's set to launch today.

Rumblr countdown

Rumblr

The Rumblr countdown.

Business Insider understands that something is going to launch today, but it's not an iOS app, and will instead be a version of what the pair claimed to be releasing. It looks like the pair started the site as a joke, realised that people liked the idea, and then actually built something. 

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