A few weeks ago, a 15 year old girl accidentally invited all of her Facebook friends to her birthday party. A few people made a Facebook page for her birthday party, called "Project X". The media promoted this as a joke, but it all ended up in a big ravage in the small town called Haren. 34 arrested, more than 50 reported injuries, broken windows, plundered shops, devastated busses and trains, special forces on the scene, medical workers attacked and threatened. Long story short: a real disaster.
The girl wanted to have a "sweet sixteen", and wanted to invite her friends to her home in Haren, but she accidentally invited all of her Facebook friends, and they invited all of THEIR friends. This resulted in a snowball effect of people wanting to go to the girl's birthday party. It seemed like an innocent prank at first, but people started inviting more and more of their friends to Project X. Now let's get a few facts straight.
Of the 16 million inhabitants of the Netherlands, 24.000 people said they would come.
On the radio, one of the DJ's said on air that it would be fun if everyone came, and that they should invite their friends too. (Later he tweeted: "Okay, I was stupid for inviting all those people to Project X. It was a very stupid idea." )
On the news, people gave A LOT of attention to this subject. Not only that, but some talk shows made fun of Project X as well, making jokes about it and inviting people intended as a joke.
The mayor of Haren said that there would be NO PARTY AT ALL in Haren, and said that everyone should NOT COME to Haren. This naturally provoked the mindless party hard youth to come, because they LOVE to provoke the mobile units etc. -_- This was so predictable.
There were buses going to Groningen (one of the major cities in the Netherlands) and local authorities told everyone to go to Groningen instead to party over there, but that only resulted in buses being destroyed. Cars were flipped along the way, windows smashed.
I guess people never learn. Anyway, luckily some peoplke organised the massive project "Clean X" (10.000 participants) to clean up the mess.
It was said on the news that the ones responsible for the damage are the ones who are going to pay for it.
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