I'll disagree in this case since the creator made a comment supporting the speculation.Nope. This is always the result of that sort of hype and speculation.
Same thing happened when people wanted to confirm... what, Gen IV(?) starters as fake. Same thing that happens in the Smash thread every week.
...God I can't wait for Ridley to be truly deconfirmed.
What implications though? Link has looked androgynous for a long time now, we had people talking about how feminine he looked when the Hyrule Warriors full sized artwork was revealed. The only implication at all that this was someone other than the standard Link was Aonuma trolling, and even he didn't say "what if it's a female".
People mainly seem mad IMO because they didn't want to believe that the model of Link we saw could be a guy because it "didn't fit" male stereotypes from their personal view, and thus must be female.
First, I'm all for androgynous characters. But there's always going to be more noticeably female traits compared to male. This Link looked like a woman and compared to all his other incarnations it's exactly why everyone was starting to think it was a new character or female version.
He has a ponytail, slimmer face and body, curves and uses a bow and arrow and yet people are reading into things? It's pretty obvious this design was done on purpose.
Him also after all of the blow up about the design decides to make a comment saying "I never said that was Link" is definitely feeding fans the idea it's a female or new character.