No, a man didn’t die because his 6-ton porn stash collapsed on him.

Have you heard a story about a man perishing after his massive porn stash collapsed on top of him? There’s a good chance you have since it’s been reported on a number of mainstream tabloid rags recently, despite it being the headline you’d usually expect to see on low-quality clickbait websites.

However, despite the curious story originally appearing in tabloid outlet The Daily Mail recently, the story has been embellished. A lot, as Gizmodo notes.

almost nothing about that headline is correct. The Daily Mail seems to have taken a sad story of a man’s death in Japan and added a few lies to make it more sensational. And from there it went viral, getting picked up by the likes of The Mirror, The Toronto Sun, CBS Philly, and Sky News Australia, among a host of others.

The Daily Mail headline read – Porn really is bad for you! Lonely Japanese man who amassed a SIX-TON pile of dirty magazines died when it collapsed on top of him… and his body wasn’t found for six months

It appears The Daily Mail exaggerated various elements of the story somewhat, most likely to induce clicks to its own website, and now the story has been republished across other outlets and blogs.

What’s true? A man was found dead in his apartment which was filled with a large number of pornography magazines, estimated at weighing around 6 tons.

What’s false? The claim the man died because the magazines fell on him is false, as is the claim that he was not found for 6 months. According to an earlier article from Nikkan – a Japanese outlet – the man died of a heart attack and was found around a month after his demise. He fell on top of – or around – his magazines. There was no evidence to support the conclusion he was “crushed” by the magazines, and The Daily Mail did not provide any sources.

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As you can see, there are many more false elements to The Daily Mail article than true ones.

The Daily Mail is notorious in the UK for either starting or disseminating hoaxes and clickbait. In June 2015 the site publishes a fake story claiming a Pakistani politician blamed earthquakes on women wearing tight jeans. We’ve also written a blog post on them outlining 3 times they media outlet shared a fake news story.

It was recently announced that Wikipedia no longer allows users to use The Daily Mail as a reference because of their tendency to embellish news. This may go some way to explaining why.