Well, how would you like that! HYPEX who, as it seems, is the big Fortnite leaker of all time, revealing the skins and updates before the official ones tell the world nothing but good… He even made a different announcement and it was not a leak indeed. Rather, it was a…consciousness. A very unpleasant, opening of an eye, ‘I-wish-I-could-unsee-this’ type of consciousness. The dude found out about the meaning of the term ‘frotting’ and the internet, as always, went completely crazy.

In case you are one of those who do not know what was mentioned above – really, do your best to keep that ignorance – ‘frotting’ is a, um, a very precise word. It is not something that would normally pop up in an average Battle Royale match. But one very particular, uh, player, who is being quite…creative…has made it forever linked to the game’s leading female character, Jonesy. Actually, there is a player who is using this username. ‘JonesyFrotting’. And that is what HYPEX, and then a lot of gamers, have to regret.

HYPEX’s tweet was quite simply put, just a top-notch example of understated horror: ‘I JUST LEARNED WHAT THAT WORD MEANS’. A picture was also attached that was probably of the famous username in question. That was all that was required. The doors were opened all the way.

In replies to the original tweet, the aftermath was a great, disordered, and quite chaotic mix of trauma sharing. One user wrote very much along the lines of the majority. ‘I just learned what ✨frotting✨ means and I wish I didn’t. Twenty seconds wasted… 😭🙏’ Another one said in a very meek manner, ‘I should not have let my curiosity get the better of me.’ Without a doubt, this is very good advice. The moment of enlightenment is always very painful in everyone’s eyes. ‘I made the mistake of Googling it too… I need bleach for my eyes immediately,’ said another player lamenting but actually, speaking for us all.

The people were not just discussing together their common shame of having done the Google search. The debate quickly switched to pure, unspoiled Fortnite chaos. The people started asking the must-know questions. ‘WHO THE FUCK IS JONSEY FROTTING,’ one user exclaimed because this was indeed the most pertinent inquiry in the new weird timeline. The speculations skyrocketed. ‘Jonsey is gay???? Hell yeah’ another, who was overjoyed about the new character development, said. While this was going on, others were connecting the issue with the recent in-game events through their 3 AM logic: ‘Fortnite is wilding after the Kim K collab😭’.

The simple fact that there was a ‘JonesyFrotting’ account became a meme at once. One user tagged the account in his/her reply and just said, ‘It’s so over 💔💔💔’ followed by a simple, guess what, devastated face. The one behind the account, a user with the name ‘sarah’, accidentally became a star of sorts in this strange drama. The discourse even included a bizarre generational gap as a commenter proudly declared, ‘newgens learning bout frotting… us oldgen 2017 been learned about it’. So, uh, congratulations to the OGs, I guess.

And we should not forget the international dimension of the issue! One user remarked, ‘to be fair the average native English speakers doesn’t know what frotting is’, which is probably the case and makes it even more comical for all those who had to look it up that they will never see the situation as funny. It was a global hour of panic.

The astonishing part is that this is not a new weapon or map, but rather the peculiar, natural, and sometimes very uncomfortable culture that evolves, around a game as gigantic as Fortnite. Gamers create their own jokes, stories, and even… niche interests. And sometimes, these very things are brought to light just because a popular leaker stumbled upon them. The official channels of the game would never acknowledge something like this, but in the player-driven ecosystem, it’s front-page news.

It is a warning that the community is a living beast. Epic Games may bless us with certain plotlines about cubes and reality-warping zero points but the gamers will always present us with… JonesyFrotting. The two exist side by side, and sometimes they crash into each other like this—in a most awkward yet spectacular manner.

So what are the lessons here for us? Maybe, just maybe, we should not Google strange usernames. Or perhaps, the Fortnite storyline is indeed more profound and intricate than we have ever imagined. Or maybe, just maybe, some knowledge is best left unlearned, especially for players on PlayStation and Xbox.