It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Something Awful. (Discuss) Greenlighting was a roughly three-day-long attempted internet hoax launched by Something Awful users on the evening of July 2, 2005, primarily as references to the greenlighter message board or as postings on said board. The hoax referred to a new sexual practice in which men and women wore green shirts with the collars turned up, and had sexual relations with whomever turned the collars down. In truth, no such sexual practice has taken place on any notable scale. The practice was invented in an attempt to imitate the success of the Toothing hoax of 2004. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ...
It has been suggested that Greenlighting be merged into this article or section. ...
Greenlighting was a roughly three-day-long attempted internet hoax launched by Something Awful users on the evening of July 2, 2005, primarily as references to the greenlighter message board or as postings on said board. ...
It has been suggested that Greenlighting be merged into this article or section. ...
July 2 is the 183rd day of the year (184th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 182 days remaining. ...
2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Toothing was originally a media hoax that claimed that Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones or PDAs were being used to arrange sexual encounters. ...
Setting up the hoax
The greenlighter.org domain was registered by Eston Bond (Something Awful username 'kalocin') on July 2, and links to the site began being posted in the blogosphere in the days immediately following. The first posting regarding "greenlighting" on an open web forum appeared on metafilter.com on July 2, and the first reference to "greenlighting" on Usenet appeared on July 4. A Yahoo! group named "Greenlight Cafe" was also created on July 2 [1]. These sites were populated by various users, most of them coordinating on the site www.wookiefetish.com. July 2 is the 183rd day of the year (184th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 182 days remaining. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Weblog. ...
July 2 is the 183rd day of the year (184th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 182 days remaining. ...
Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ...
July 4 is the 185th day of the year (186th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 180 days remaining. ...
Yahoo! Inc. ...
July 2 is the 183rd day of the year (184th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 182 days remaining. ...
Claims made by greenlighter.org According to postings on the "greenlighter message board", the following is claimed regarding "greenlighting": - The trend is thought to have started in the gay community but quickly spread through 2004 [2].
- Collaring is the act lowering the collar of a greenlighter, signaling a desire for sex [3].
- Redlighting is the act of refusing sex to one who has "collared" you [4].
- That a server crash caused the loss of "a couple years' worth of data" [5].
Uncovering the hoax It was immediately speculated to be a hoax by many users at Metafilter, where the first external link to the forum was posted. The hoaxers abandoned their attempt on the morning of July 6 after information about the deception was posted to Wikipedia. The organizers of the attempted hoax later posted their "memoirs" on the site [6]. The original site can be seen here [7]. Metafilters main page MetaFilter, known as MeFi to its members, is a community weblog whose purpose is to share links and discuss interesting websites. ...
July 6 is the 187th day of the year (188th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 178 days remaining. ...
For information on the internal side of Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:About. ...
Concurrently with this, the journalist Cyrus Farivar, who had been among the bloggers casting suspicion on the hoax, found links from the Wookiefetish site in his referrer logs. He registered an account on the forum to access the messages and found proof that the site was a hoax, revealing it on his blog. As a result of the Metafilter entry and the Wikipedia article, the hoax was effectively over, and the site was taken down. Cyrus Farivar, in recline Cyrus John Farivar (IPA: , born January 2, 1982 in Santa Monica, California) is an assistant editor at Macworld magazine and is a freelance technology journalist living in the city of Oakland, California. ...
Aftermath of the hoax Shortly after the site was taken down, the Wikipedia article on Greenlighting was deleted following a discussion on the site's votes for deletion page. Two weeks later, Farivar wrote an article for the online newsmagazine Slate in which he described his role in uncovering the hoax, as well as discussing some of the harassment he received after uncovering the hoax, including vandalism of his article on Wikipedia. Farivar's Slate article was also notable in that it caused a deletion debate on the article about Farivar in Wikipedia, since it revealed that Farivar had created his own article. Following the coverage in Slate, the Wikipedia article on Greenlighting was recreated on the grounds that the coverage, which ironically discussed the deleted Wikipedia article, had made the subject notable. Slate. ...
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