Vitalik has made a large mistake in being the public spokesperson for Ethereum.
The kind of hoax you wrote about is just one aspect of this.
The other is where the delve into his personal history and start to smear his project with any personal history, framed to make the entire ecosystem look suspect.
If it becomes too successful, he also runs the risk of being co-opted or even harmed by competitors that want ETH out of the game.