San Francisco, CA - Over 100 fans of the popular web comic xkcd have commited ritual suicide reenacting a comic posted on Wednesday. In the past, fans of the comic have recreated several of the comics in real life, like playing chess on a roller coaster, guitar-playing women in a bath tub, and ninjas attacking Richard Stallman.
"I didn't think people would try to recreate this one," said comic creator Randall Munroe. "If I had known I had this much control over people, I would've drawn a comic about washing my car, or building an army of cybernetic sex slaves for me. I probably shouldn't run that comic about using physics to assassinate the President of Bolivia. "
The comic that caused the deaths showed a group of stick figures jumping off the Golden Gate bridge, halfway down they drop a penny, and pretend they are levitating the penny with their minds. Munroe pulled the comic from the site after learning of the death, hoping to prevent any more suicides. However, many fans have found the comic in Google's Cache and at the Web Archive, so more deaths seem imminent.
"Once something is on the web, it's there forever," said xkcd fan Marlon Hatcher. "I can't wait to go to the next meetup in San Francisco and kill myself with other fans."
Police were still recovering many of the skinny white, black t-shirt clad bodies from the bay late into the night. San Francisco Police Chief, Robert Evans said, "I always knew web comics were a bad influence on our youth, I didn't know how bad until this."
This is the largest death total attributable to a web comic, far surpassing the 18 deaths caused by a Penny Arcade comic in 2002.
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