Meet John Correa, an 18-year-old student at G. Holmes Braddock Senior High School in Miami, Florida.
On Saturday, he sent out a tweet telling his followers that it was his last day working at Burger King, so he had stolen all their chicken nuggets.
"TOOK ALL OF THEIR CHICKEN NUGGETS, FUCK IT," he wrote.
Correa was instantly celebrated as a hero as his tweet spread across the media.
Y'all hear about the guy that got fired from Burger King and then stole all their chicken nuggets? That guy is my hero.
He was called a "man of the people."
A man of the people. A chicken nugget hero. https://t.co/hsksEv4UAm
"I'd do the same thing," one guy wrote. "God bless this American hero."
I'd do the same thing. God bless this American hero. https://t.co/5ph6NfRC3N
People even crowned him the "Chicken King."
Not the hero we deserve, but the hero we need #ChickenKing https://t.co/ZmXrrUw1XD
The problem is, the story wasn't true at all. Correa tweeted out the story to see how many people would believe it without any question, he told BuzzFeed News.
The teen explained that he is a fan of satirical comedy, and saw an opportunity to test his theory that people online will fall for any story.
He said he was looking to make a point about how people instantly buy "into what media says" and fall for "whatever is glorified."
"You see something on media, you automatically believe it was true," he said. "And you automatically follow whatever it says."
He said that BuzzFeed News was the first outlet to contact him to verify the story. WPLG in Florida first interviewed Correa to debunk the story on Tuesday night.
"Nobody contacted me to see if it was true or not," he said.
Correa said he actually was just running an errand for his manager. The Burger King location where he works ran out of chicken nuggets, so he drove to another location to pick up a few bags.
He said he eventually deleted his entire Twitter feed after the tweet reached over 40,000 retweets.
The teen said he did this because his family is very religious, and he didn't want to compromise their reputation at church if people continued to believe the story was true.
His point appears to have been made. Many news outlets like Mashable covered the story.
The New York Times' news app, NYT Now, even included a story about Correa from a local news station in its news roundup.
Correa still works for Burger King. But he said he has another job lined up and plans to quit in a couple of weeks.
Aside from satirical comedy, he has a passion for photography and hopes to study organic architecture to design buildings that produce energy for the environment.
He said as the tweet began to blow up online, he was "annoyed."
"But then I was just kind of relaxed and I was like 'Alright this is good. I can get my message out there,'" he said. "I just want people to wake up and realize what's going on in our society right now."