4chan Trolls Take Over Mountain Dew ‘Dub the Dew’ Campaign Never underestimate the Internet’s power to stop genocide bring down soda companies’ lame crowdsourcing campaigns. Mountain Dew gave the masses naming rights to a new flavor (“with green apple attitude”), and it seems online pranks-’n’-memes factory 4chan (the same army that recently brought down this lettuce-stomping Burger King employee) got to it first. UPDATE: Mountain Dew responded on Twitter, saying the campaign “lost to The Internet.” More here. For a while, the top-voted flavor was Hitler Did Nothing Wrong: UPDATE: Reddit says 4chan did it. Now 4chan says Reddit did it, even though there is a screencap of the original thread on 4chan (below). Who is telling the truth? Is it possible an independent team of organized pranksters are the culprits? The evidence could be lying in the mysterious Rickroll on the Mountain Dew site, says one Tumblr user: After clicking the link the user was directed to the mountain dew website and a pop up box that said “le 9gga are leggion” appeared… I kind of panicked, thinking it was a website with a virus or something. However, after clicking “ok” an embedded Youtube video of Rick Astley singing “Never Gonna Give You Up” starts playing. There was also a marquee at the top of the page that says “Mtn Dew salutes the Israeli Mossad for demolishing 3 towers on 9/11!” But it’s probably not 9gag. There are now multiple threads on 4chan’s /b/ on the status of the Mountain Dew prank. The site, DubtheDew.com, is down, but here’s a working mirror. According to 4chan, the voting is now disabled. SEE MORE: • Why You Should Never Ask 4chan for Photoshop Help • Reddit Harasses Teenage Girl Who Possibly Faked Her Own Bullying Follow Us Will anyone read the name you submit? Questionable. More importantly, is the whole thing fake? Probably not — here’s the campaign on Facebook. The site’s 1998-era Geocities aesthetic screams hoax, but hey, that’s the last time the ball-shrinking neon-green sludge feigned a semblance of popularity and cultural relevance. For more uneasy chuckles, here’s a full list of submitted names, most of which are Hitler jokes. Click to embiggen. Our vote still goes to Fapple. 4chan has trolled corporate crowdsourcing campaigns with success in the past. It got a German dish-soap company to put the Rage Guy meme on its packaging and installed a handicapped kid as the face of a Norwegian bodywash. Oh yeah, and then this happened to the TIME 100 list. SEE MORE: • 4chan Busts Lettuce-Stomping Burger King Employee • Reddit Decides It’s Time for a Certain Scientologist Actor to Come Out Follow Us [Reddit] HVculture HVCulture is our bin for all things Culture.
Sir Doof Doof 13.08.12 @ 12:48 pm heartless? I can see how this stuff could be offensive but obviously it was a prank. Heartless is a bit much
Jerkface McGee 13.08.12 @ 10:40 pm It was definitely 9GAG. Obviously the threads on this “4chan” were planted by these people.
Ken Cho'Gath 15.08.12 @ 8:47 pm I hate it when articles make it look like these websites are entities that troll the internets. IMHO, neither reddit nor 4chan is responsible but 9fag will probably take credit for it anyways.
Jimmy R. 16.08.12 @ 2:33 am I can confirm this was 9gag, because I was part of the raid. We had one team raiding (REDTEAM), one team adding false data/info to 4chan (MAGENTATEAM) and another one screencapping and blaming 4chan for our work.(MAROONTEAM). WE IS LEGION
Pnis 19.08.12 @ 6:06 am >I kind of panicked thinking it was a website with a virus or something OH GOD MY SIDES
ILYKETEFAPPLE 27.08.12 @ 11:01 am you think this is heartless ? LOOL WELCOME TO THE INTERNET DUDE ! this is weak compared to what 4chan, memecenter, reddit and 9gags.