Project X Haren

Project X Haren was an event that started out as a public invitation to a birthday party by a girl on Facebook, but ended up as a gathering of thousands of youths causing riots on 21 September 2012 in the town of Haren, Groningen.

The event was unprecedented in the Netherlands, but in June 2011, a German girl posted similar birthday invitations on the internet. Hundreds of mostly drunk youths gathered in Hamburg, Germany, causing a great deal of damage and rioting against the police.

On 6 September 2012, a 15-year-old girl from Haren sent 78 friends a public invitation to her 16th birthday via the social network site Facebook. She deliberately chose the option 'public', so that her friends could bring other friends. This way, the girl hoped to obtain a head count. One of her friends' friends misused the invitation and invited 500 people himself. Through the notorious snowball effect thousands of people were added to that number in a matter of days. In just two days, 16,000 people were invited. The girl then deleted the event after consulting her parents. However, others took command and quickly Twitter and Facebook were filled with terms like Project X Merthe (the name of the girl), Project X Stationsweg (the street where the girl lived), and Project X Haren. Project X is a reference to the 2012 film Project X, directed by Nima Nourizadeh.

Project X Haren was run by a 21-year-old man from Christchurch, New Zealand, and an unknown individual from Berlin calling himself "Ibe Der Fuhrer". The 21-year-old man claims he accepted the request from a Dutch person to host the Facebook event. The father of the birthday girl asked the two men to cancel the event, but they did not comply.

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Wikipedia