This is a post of sorrow and joy. A story of crime and punishment, wild partying and crazy damages. It is also a tale of innocence, guilt and tricky law and order.
10 cases where selling out the event did not make organizers happy. 10 different stories beginning with one common thought: “”.
Dear professional event planner, I believe there are lessons to learn in the following unfortunate experiences. I am sure you are not a teenager anymore. However do pay attention as what I am trying to demonstrate is that things can get out of control quickly on Facebook, and you don’t want that to happen.
Category: Cautionary Police Intervention
10. Drinking under le Tour Eiffel
Seriously, what a neat idea. It would be awesome to get a few friends together and have a cocktail party in one of the most incredible landmarks in the world.
Approximately 10,000 people found the idea brilliant and decided to sign up for the alcohol fuelled gathering. French police did not like the idea of having to deal with such a large crowd of vin enthusiasts and decided to ban alcohol in the area for the night of the event.
Guess what? A cocktail party with no cocktail is not a great experience.
9. The Night of Mayhem
English are not as sophisticated as their French counterparts and set it straight on the invite: ‘We are going to get drunk in Torbay, Devon’.
Again, ‘What a fantastic idea’ must have thought the 7,000 people who RSVP’d positively to the event. The thing is that English police reacted quite similarly to the French and put up the sign ‘Party is over’ on the event early on.
Alcohol ban and lots of apologies from the organizers.
8. A barbie with few of my mates
Andrew Poole thought of inviting 17 of his mates to enjoy a glorious barbecue and possibly sleep overnight with Facebook invites.
He must have freaked out when a police helicopter and 4 vans interrupted the party asking the crowd to scatter! Poor Poole lost £800 ($1300) worth of equipment and food. Apparently Devon police was still on the alert from party #9 on this list. He’s really not happy on the pic here.
Category: Punk’d
7. Hacked Queenslander
Son: “Dad”
Dad: “Yes son”
Son: “Do you remember the party I told you about”
Dad: “I do, son. I am not 100% convinced, you promise you will keep it quiet?”
Son: “Well, I am not too sure about that, I got 4000 friends coming”
Poor kid in Brisbane got the profile hacked and the party went viral. Thankfully someone on Twitter bothered to inform police. Well done Twitter!
6. Kate’s Party
David Thorne is an Australian writer (gosh the Ozzies enjoy partying) that picked up Kate’s invite for her amazing home party. All of a sudden Kate was submerged by more than 60,000 RSVPs – yep you read that right, sixty K.
In the same fashion of our previous story, Kate was a prank victim. I can’t help but feeling compassion as well as guffawing reading the well documented story.
5. Happy Birthday Rebecca
Oh dear, poor little Rebecca. She was just trying to get her friends to attend her birthday party. Well, she forgot to set the event private and became the unfortunate victim of yet another prank. She got 21,000 RSVP and despite mom jumped on the site to cancel, the police had to patrol the area to make sure that no uninvited guests showed up. I guess the lesson is that you need to read it twice before hitting the publish button.
Category: Collateral Damage
4. Mayfair Mayhem
This is a category where the perpetrators use Facebook as a weapon of mass diffusion. The following is a fantastic example of it.
Mayfair is to London what Beverly Hills is to LA. When a group of squatters got an eviction notice from a £30M ($49M) mansion in the heart of the Big Smoke they did not like it. They used Facebook to throw the party of a lifetime and more than 2,000 felt compelled to attend.
Problem was that it all ended up in booze fuelled destruction and riots for the brave agents to control. Looking at the pictures, it does not look like a successful party.
3. 10K Extravaganza
If in the ‘Punk’d’ category we covered innocent victims of online pranks, these two chaps joined the dark side and seemed happy about it. Jordan and Seva thought it was a good idea to join forces to throw the party of the decade. 250 people turned up to demolish, drink and enjoy. Helicopters and special forces intervened to calm down the situation and restore law and order. The evil couple generated damages for £10K ($16K) and seemed quite happy about it.
2. Rachel’s Friends
Oh, naughty Rachel. It’s a classic situation: parents out, home alone. She tought it was a great idea to become popular on Facebook by getting some friends to crush at her place. The 50 yobs that turned up trashed the place, stole valuables and… erm pour bubble bath in dad’s TV. This alone earns Rachel spot number 2.
1. Party King of Australia
Corey Delaney is the true inspiration of this post and king of all home-alone, Facebook-fuelled parties gone wrong. Technically it was a mix of MySpace and Facebook. However the result was still the same. Pure madness. 500 people trashed a quiet suburb of Melbourne and a star was born.
Corey Delaney is to events what Gordon Ramsay is to cooking. Arrogance, confidence and charisma. Don’t get me wrong, he is not exactly the most acute lad you will bump into, but the way he completely wins over the sad moral remarks of the TV host made him an overnight phenomenon. Still a big bill to pay though, mate.
Photo by _ankor
