Wednesday, 17 October 2007

Facebook faker reveals Spiderpig-naming is web of lies

"When a group was set up on the social networking website Facebook entitled: "If 100,000 people join, my wife will let me name my second child Spiderpig", the result was inevitable.
The petition dangling the prospect of a child being named after a pet pig character in the Simpsons movie attracted signatures like bees to honey. Members soon rocketed to well above the required number and founder Oli Young was under pressure to deliver. But to the disappointment of the thousands of people who joined the "Spiderpig" group, Mr Young, from Adelaide in Australia, has now revealed it was all a hoax. The web developer posted a message on the group's page informing people the idea was just a practical joke. "This was never more than a couple of bored geeks kicking around an idea. We hope you had fun. We really didn't mean to offend anyone and we hope you aren't too disappointed in the truth." Mr Young has one daughter, called Amélie, but his wife is not pregnant and he says that in any case he would never be so irresponsible as to call his child "Spiderpig". He and his colleagues instead took delight in monitoring the success of their creation, which gained worldwide attention. But even after Mr Young revealed the truth, the group was still gaining new signatures yesterday and heading for 120,000 members." Scotsman October 2007

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