Something Awful Comes This Way. Or Not. (Youth Sex Edition)

Nick Gillespie | August 2, 2005

Over at Slate, Macworld's Cyrus Farivar explains how he stopped a burgeoning Internet hoax dealing with (what else?) young people having anonymous sex. This time around, the supposed practice was "greenlighting," which involved signaling partners by flipping up the collar of your green polo shirt.

Farivar poured water on the hoaxers' plans by outing them at Wikipedia. Using the sites Something Awful and Wookieefetish as a staging ground, they hoped to see greenlighting discussed as a real trend in places like Time and Oprah. Then he suffered the consequences on his own site:

I saw that the greenlighters had replaced my boring "technology journalist living in Oakland" entry with a detailed sexual fantasy involving ... a Wookiee. I read as far as "Chewie reached down with his jaw and grasped the jeans and knickers, tugging them down savagely" before taking the story down. They responded by adding a clumsy Photoshop job of me accepting a Pulitzer Prize from a Wookiee. I tried to undo it. Someone else added a British tabloid page marked up to depict me as a terrorist.

It's a fun story of cybersleuthing. And one that makes you wonder just how much crap passes for real when it comes to all sorts of trends.

(And on second thought, given the piece is published at Slate, which was the object of two big-league hoaxes in the past, it would actually be extremely clever if the piece by Farivar--sounds like a fake name, hmmm--was itself a fake about a fake.)

Slate piece here.

Farivar's site here.

Wookieefetish here.

Comments

|8.2.05 @ 5:03PM|#

On surveys that supposedly measure the percentage of teens who are sexually active, people just say they are to be funny.
Huh, huh, hey Beavis! He said "sex."
Oh yeah! Heh heh heh heh heh!
Most people wait at least until they're in their 30s.
Besides, only old people wear polo shirts.

|8.2.05 @ 5:03PM|#

Gawd, I miss the 70s. Back in those days, the news media kept its nose out of what most people thought were private matters, and a kid could fuck in peace. (Unless his parents found out about it. Then one learns to lie through his teeth.)

|8.2.05 @ 5:08PM|#

I love Something Awful. Over the years there's been some pretty good stuff to come out of both the website and the forum.

The P-P-P-P-Powerbook scam and the kid who built his own Flamethrower are some of the best stuff on the internet.

Too bad this one got aborted before it could come to term.

|8.2.05 @ 5:12PM|#

Photoshop Phriday is hit or miss, but when it hits, it can be downright amazing.

Cyrus Farivar|8.2.05 @ 5:38PM|#

Glad you guys are enjoying it. :)

|8.2.05 @ 5:54PM|#

Something Awful is a highlight of my online experience. The Weekend Web is a favorite.

This green polo shirt thing reminds me of a similar dopey thing I heard in the 80s, except the green was tied to an M&Ms baseball promotion where green M&Ms were the home run color.

|8.2.05 @ 6:03PM|#

I used to have a friend named Chuey--his real name was Jesus (Hey-soos). We used to call him Chewbacca, but he didn't really look like a Wookiee, not even when his hair was long.

...He looked like a Pakuni.

|8.2.05 @ 10:54PM|#

As a member of something awful dot com, I am reminded once again that the internet is full of mean people.

|8.3.05 @ 9:54AM|#

The best thing they have is the Fashion SWAT section, making fun of crappy fashion. The International Male Catalogue thing is freakin hilarious.

|8.3.05 @ 10:13AM|#

Has anyone read in the latest Time Magazine the shit 13 year old girls pull on each other?

If this thread is about entrapment, at least it's not government subsidized.

|8.3.05 @ 11:17AM|#

something awful more like somethingisawful.com lol am i rite?

|8.3.05 @ 11:58AM|#

Do the Something Awful goons have less right to make shit up? A whole lot of trend news is commercial entities hoping to stir up demand for their products/celebrities/services. (Capri pants are back! Tom Cruise is getting engaged!)

I've even heard rumors that our government sometimes makes up stories about why we should invade other countries.

|8.3.05 @ 3:28PM|#

I totally bought the "toothing" thing. I'm still a bit embarassed by it. To be fair, it was plausible.