This past week saw a nice clash of the Old (disconnected, reading paper papers, off-line) World with the New (connected, using social media, on-line) World in the Netherlands. A girl living in Haren, a town in the North of the Netherlands (and for those who know a bit about Dutch geography, it happens to be right next to the town I'm going to live in at the end of this year), posted an invitation on Facebook to come and celebrate her 16th birthday with her. She just happened to forget to set the privacy setting on "Friends alone". Hilarity ensued.

The number of people saying they would attend quickly went into the thousands. The local government therefore proceeded to declare an emergency situation "as we cannot guarantee safety" (see what I did there Dark Knight? ).

Ever since last Tuesday, government officials are trying to get a grip on the invitations and to monitor any developments on several social media around the party. It apparentely went viral on other forms of social media (Twitter, the more Dutch oriented Hyves and Habbo) which made it go from an invitation to friends, to some accepting the invitation thinking they could crash the party, to some accepting as a prank, to a full scale (Dutch) meme. Although I say Dutch, but maybe others have heard about it around the world? I wouldn't be really surprised if this went global - especially now that the police and the Ministry of Justice are involved and local media are swallowing this story whole.

Today, city hall issued a statement saying "there is no party".

("...try to realize the truth." "What truth?" "There is no party." )



I find this hilarious even if the poor girl must feel terrible. At least she'll never forget her Sweet Sixteen. Neither will her parents, her friends, the mayor and the local police chief. Knowing the Internet, it will all end up with only a few people show up, those who don't really understand this new social media thing. And maybe some perverts. But overall, I doubt it'll be a big thing.
We'll see on Friday.


[EDIT Sorry all. As Legolas already pointed out below, it obviously did go out of hand, and it's not funny anymore. Hopefully they'll get at least some of the people who looted and rioted and we can put this behind us.