Greenlighting hoax

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" (now defunct) or as postings on said board. The hoax referred to a new [...] practice in which men and women wore green shirts with the collars turned up, and had [...] relations with whoever turned the collars down. In truth, no such [...] 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.

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.

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
• Collaring is the act lowering the collar of a greenlighter, signaling a desire for [...]
• Redlighting is the act of refusing [...] to one who has "collared" you
• That a server crash caused the loss of "a couple years' worth of data"

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.

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.

See also

• "Something Awful" - Source of "Greenlighting" hoax.
• "Green-Collar Crime: How I stopped an Internet [...] hoax" by Cyrus Farivar - Article in Slate, in which the author claims some credit for stopping the hoax.
• Urban Dictionary "Greenlighting" Hoax definitions created by perpetrators of the prank.
• Toothing - A similar internet meme.