***This post contains a link that is Not Safe For Work (NSFW) due to the use of the F Bomb. It is marked within the text as a courtesy because we don’t want to be the result of you being unemployed. Because we care.***
Have you ever?wanted to retaliate against?someone so?badly that you would wish an avalanche of glitter?to fall upon them and invade their every crack, crevice, and orifice? Now you have the vehicle to deliver that glittery awesomeness of revenge?without getting any of the tell-tale stuff mired in your own cracks, crevices, and orifices.
An Australian company named Ship Your Enemies Glitter?(NSFW link)?appears to have cornered the market by providing a service that allows you to, literally, ship your enemies a glitter bomb in an envelope, guaranteed to explode all over their office, home, or the local post office – wherever they happen to open the “gift.”
After going viral on Reddit, it was sadly revealed that this was only a fake marketing campaign. The brainchild of Matthew Carpenter, a 22 year old social media?genius. After reading the book, Trust Me, I’m Lying and several?articles written by Ryan Holiday, Carpenter decided to try his hand at fooling the world and making a bit of?spare change?in the process.
What started as a marketing experiment ended up being a very humorous example of how media is sometimes too quick on the share button. Increasingly, media outlets are journeying away from actual research and unique stories and gravitating toward regurgitated news that plays on all the major outlets in different formats. The wording is all different, but the stories are all the same.
This isn’t the first time that a story has gone viral and later turned out to be a hoax. The high school student from New York that allegedly made $72 million dollars playing the stock market on his lunch hour was also a runaway success-story hoax?that was uncovered by the Observer.
The website created by Carpenter has been sold, for a whopping $85,000, to an undisclosed buyer at flippa.com. The closing remarks on the bid description tell a grim tale of what happens when journalists don’t research their topic:
“The website is less than a week old & has received press from virtually every major online publication. If you do a search in Google for ?shipyourenemiesglitter.com? despite only being a few days old, the site already garners ?About 1,620,000 results?.”
“Along with the online websites, we’ve been featured on a ton of radio stations, TV shows, podcasts, print & my favorite so far: Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”
?During an interview with Holiday, Carpenter revealed,
“…how great the demand for weird, funny startups actually is and how desperate and derivative the online media is these days. In fact, he told many reporters exactly what he was doing but they chose not to print it?for fear it would ruin their story or make them look bad.”
We cannot fault Carpenter. He tried to tell the truth. Reporters didn’t listen. Now he is $85,000 richer. Good for him.
From what we can tell, the website is active and is set up to accept payment via PayPal and credit cards. If you have an enemy that you would like bedazzled and cursed with a glitter bomb, feel free to place an order to see if the new owners are now operating this as a real business venture.
