A Virgin’s Plea
Status: Hoax
Here's a hoax that I missed while away in Scotland. Geoff (who withheld his last name) claimed to be a twenty-five-year-old virgin. He launched a website (avirginsplea.com) on May 1, declaring that if his site received five million hits by the end of the month, a girl he knew had promised to sleep with him. Soon blogs were linking to his site to help him out, and the media (unable, as always, to resist an unusual story about sex) deluged him with requests for interviews. Predictably, it all turned out to be a hoax. Geoff, although a real person, was not a virgin, as reporters found out who tracked down a former girlfriend of his. In addition, Geoff hadn't created the site. He was merely the front man for it. The creator of the site was web designer Matthew Gamble who had intended it, so he later claimed, to be an experiment in viral marketing. I learned about this hoax yesterday when I got a call from MTV Canada, who, after initially having been taken in by the hoax, were now interviewing Gamble on air. They telephoned me to get my opinion as a 'hoax expert'. Specifically, they were very curious about whether Gamble's hoax warranted inclusion in the Museum of Hoaxes. I assured them that it did, which seemed to make them happy. I didn't add that my standards for what warrants inclusion on the site are pretty low. As long as something sounds kind of hoaxy, I'll post about it on my blog. (The standards for what makes it into the Gallery sections of the site are much higher.)
I should also note that avirginsplea.com was a spoof of helpwinmybet.com, a site launched in March by a guy claiming that his girlfriend had agreed to a threesome if his site received two million hits. To my knowledge helpwinmybet.com hasn't been exposed as a hoax, per se, but I'm guessing that it's just a scheme to generate revenue from ads for dating sites.
|
Categories: Sex/Romance, Websites Posted by Alex on Thu May 25, 2006 |
Comments (8) |
| More from the Hoax Museum Archives: | |||
How sad is it that this was on the front page of Toronto newspapers, not once, but two days in a row.
Posted by Andrew on Fri May 26, 2006 at 08:27 AM
Hey Alex, you should include a NSF warning to those that would clink on the link to avirginsplea.com. I closed it pretty quickly, but I wasn't expecting what I saw.
Posted by Roger on Fri May 26, 2006 at 09:47 AM
MTV Canada. *laughs* MTV ... in Canada. Yeah, I know it exists, but really, who watches it? The Canadian teens watch Much Music, and the older people watch Much More Music... In fact, I only know one person who has the MTV Canada station.
Posted by Dracul on Fri May 26, 2006 at 01:35 PM
Er, wouldn't he have to get TWO other people to agree before he could have a threesome?
Unless one of them is dead, I mean.
Posted by Big Gary on Fri May 26, 2006 at 04:00 PM
Unless one of them is dead, I mean.
"I didn't add that my standards for what warrants inclusion on the site are pretty low."
Reminds me of my old editor in chief who allways said: don
Posted by Unfairly Balanced on Sat May 27, 2006 at 07:27 AM
Reminds me of my old editor in chief who allways said: don
@Roger
so you click on something that sounds like VIRGIN and then you quickly close it?
And then you say with dry eyes that you wasn
Posted by Unfairly Balanced on Sat May 27, 2006 at 07:32 AM
so you click on something that sounds like VIRGIN and then you quickly close it?
And then you say with dry eyes that you wasn
I don't see why being a 25-year-old virgin is such a HUGE deal. Maybe if he was above thirty, but... man, some of us wait until marriage, and don't plan on getting married until mid-twenties xD
Posted by Mera on Sat May 27, 2006 at 04:24 PM
Big deal...25 year old supposed virgin.Why is that such a horror?Western society is sooo hung up on sex and if you haven
Posted by nitedrive on Sun Jul 30, 2006 at 08:04 AM
{stupid336x280}
Get MOH Blog Posts by Email
Our Sister Sites
