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Trolls Falsely List LA Mansion as Homeless Shelter on Google Maps

Prank staged by fans of popular streamer Ice Poseidon, aka Paul Denino, causes dozens of homeless to seek shelter in his former home.

 & Jake Leary jake_leary@ziffdavis.com

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Fans of Ice Poseidon, a popular day-in-the-life online streamer, trolled Los Angeles' homeless population by setting up a fake shelter listing on Google Maps, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. The listing has since been taken down, but not before dozens of displaced Californians trekked to the home, hoping for sanctuary, and instead encountered the mansion's confused new owners.

Ice Poseidon, aka Paul Denino, creates videos about his daily life and allows his fans to fund and dare him to do various activities. A handful of his fans (he estimates a few hundred of his 700,000 subscribers) enjoy pranking him: Sometimes it'll be something harmless, such as ordering pizzas to his home, other times it's something darker, including "swatting."

In this case, the "Purple Army" listed Denino's former home, a mansion in the Tarzana neighborhood of LA, as a shelter on Google Maps, a joke based on Denino's kindness toward the homeless. The prankers wrote rave reviews claiming there was free KFC and that it included a hot tub. Several photos of organized sleeping quarters and group meals accompanied the descriptions of the Ice Poseidon Homeless Shelter. All of them, of course, were fake.

The prank started when Denino lived in the house, but he left Los Angeles in March. His fans kept up the joke, terrorizing the influx of homeless people and baffling the new tenants. Denino doesn't approve of his fans' actions, but can't do much to stop them; he's been evicted from multiple homes and apartments thanks to the Purple Army's pranks.

"You've got some sad pathetic people on the internet that literally just don't care about people," Denino told the Daily News. "At some point I realized it's not a joke anymore. Maybe the first time it was. Now it's not funny, it's dumb."

About Our Expert

Jake Leary

Jake Leary

jake_leary@ziffdavis.com

Jake Leary is an editorial intern at PCMag covering tech news. He loves gaming of all stripes and keeps an eye out for tech-industry oddities. He previously worked as a student reporter at Ithaca College and an arts writer for the greater Ithaca, NY area. Follow him on Twitter at @jd_leary.

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