Apex Legends’ new season, Revelry, began on February 14, and excitement for the game is reaching fever pitch. There has been an upturn in the amount of Apex Legends related posts on Twitter, and the game’s hashtag has even started to trend in Japan. However, the hashtag has continued to be misspelled as #ApexLedgends, and before anyone had noticed, this misspelled version became the first tag that is suggested when you search on Twitter.

Despite the fact that it is clearly misspelled, #ApexLedgends has remained trending on Twitter in Japan for quite a long period. From what we could observe, it was there from at least the 14th until the night of the 15th.

It may be that people are overlooking the mistake because it is only one extra letter, but even at the time of writing, there continues to be a steady flow of tweets that use the incorrect hashtag. Although most of these tweets are coming from Japanese users, there are also a few being posted by English-speaking users too.

What’s more interesting is that even the Twitter accounts of some businesses have fallen into the trap laid by this incorrect hashtag. For example, stores that carry Apex Legends goods, such as animate and e-stadium, have mistakenly used #ApexLedgends.

The official account for Animax’s DREAM MATCH, a large-scale tournament for the game featuring many celebrities, also used the incorrect hashtag, and there was even a post using the tag from the Twitter account that shares information about Apex Legends esports events held by Sony Interactive Entertainment. That post was actually from February 11, which is before the hashtag had started trending.

There are a few tweets here and there that have pointed out the spelling error in the hashtag, but it seems that the majority of users remain completely unaware.

It may actually be Twitter itself that is the culprit behind the persistent use of the tag, as this hashtag pops up as a suggestion when adding tags to your own tweet. Currently, when writing a tweet in the PC browser version of Twitter, typing “#apex” will cause #ApexLedgends to appear as the top option. It’s suddenly a lot more understandable that so many continue to use the incorrect hashtag.

It’s unclear where the incorrect hashtag originated, but if you look back through older tweets, then you can see that the tag did not suddenly appear at the start of the new season; it was being used frequently even some time before then.

As mentioned previously, #ApexLedgends has claimed the lead position in Twitter’s suggestion algorithm, so the incorrectly spelled hashtag will likely be sticking around for a while yet. However, will we see things return to normal as more people begin to take notice and use the correct tag, or is #ApexLedgends here to stay?

Written by. Marco Farinaccia based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-02-16 14:21 JST)

Sayoko Narita

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