OurFirstTime.com
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The mainstream media had a field day with the story, offering it up as evidence of what a circus (or freakshow) the internet was. The San Francisco Examiner gave it front-page billing.
But ourfirsttime.com ran into trouble before the day of the 'internet deflowering' could even arrive. So many people started visiting the site to read more about the story, that the site crashed and went offline.
Meanwhile, internet sleuths smelled a hoax (many people pointed out that Mike and Diane looked suspiciously like professional models), and it didn't take long for their suspicions to be confirmed.
In late July Internet Entertainment Group, the main sponsor of the site, pulled out of the deal, declaring that it had been tricked into supporting a hoax. It fingered Ken Tipton, the creator of OurFirstTime.com (and a former video-store owner and small-time entrepreneur), as the mastermind of the hoax. Tipton's plan, IEG claimed, had been to first hype the event as an educational experience, and then, once sufficient interest had been generated, to impose a $5 viewing fee shortly before the show was broadcast. Supposedly Tipton also planned to have Mike and Diane choose to abstain at the last minute. Learning of the planned abstinence was apparently the last straw for IEG.
The notoriety that the hoax achieved earned it the status of being the first widely recognized, web-based hoax. Microsoft Buys the Catholic Church, by contrast, was the first email hoax to achieve mass recognition.
References/Further Reading:
- "Web's virginity event a hoax, company's executive says," Chicago Tribune (July 18, 1998)
- "Teenager's sex on the net is a hoax," Los Angeles Times (July 18, 1998)
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