"The Pit Breakup" - a mini internet drama

[milowent]

real or fake?

i found this in the most viewed videos this week, and it appears to be being discussed everywhere. apparently this guy lured his girlfriend to some central gathering spot at his college on valentine's day -- to publicly break up with her. he advertised he was going to do it on Facebook, and a huge crowd showed up. the crowd participates -- calling her a "very *friendly* person", cheering her on for suggesting he's gay. bizarre.

this is the most popular video of the bunch 166K+ views:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=colIeH2snmI

there are other videos showing the breakup from different angles, and an interview with the guy and some response videos, which show up in the "related videos" bar.

more links about it:

www.yourewithmeinternet.com/2007/02/17/more-footage-from-the-unc-st-valentines-day-massacre/ (with links to some of the other videos)

digg.com/videos/people/UNC_student_breaks_up_with_his_girlfriend_in_front_of_3000_people

masalajokes.blogspot.com/2007/02/couples-breakup-plays-out-on-youtube.html

i can't imagine this is real, but people seem to think it is.

some comments from digg:

"Story is he organized a meeting at ''The Pit'' through facebook. Told his girlfriend he was going to sing her a song on V-Day. 3000+ people on facebook were told they were going to see the most humiliating dump ever. hahah. But hey, now everybody knows she's a cheater."

"I saw this live at the pit on my way to the bookstore. When I found out what was going on, all I could think was "thanks you two for doing the world a favor by not reproducing." Now if we can just convince them to not have sex with anyone else I think the species will be safe.
PS I grew up in a trailer park. Fuck you, you spoiled little prick."

"I also go to UNC and was in the crowd during that....
...this thing seemed very fake....

For starters, the whole thing began with a plug for the Loreleis, that acapella girls group.
Also, there was like 5 camera men for student TV there.... u'll notice the people with huge cameras getting like every possible angle...

Lastly, no chick would stand there and argue in front of like 2000 people... they would leave. This thing aired on student TV later on in the week."

"It's all a government sponsored experimental production, man. It's to assess whether or not young college minds have been so eroded down now by Dawson Creekism and reality TV that when given to encounter something like this they all take it to serious discussion. Apparently the results are positive."

"That guy obviously was deeply in love with this girl to go to such lengths to get back at her. I think it backfired on him and the girl was right, it was so difficult for him to swallow that he had to organize this scene to feel better and in the end I think he looked worse off than the cheating girl. He was played by this girl, he should have dumped her and moved on privately. The girl didn't give one shit that she was being dumped and pretty much took the whole incident in stride, while the guy was walking around like a dipshit with his hands in his pockets like a badass. Give me a break, this guy needs to get a life and a better taste in woman to fall in love with. Everyone in the video, the whole crowd, camera people, photographers, singers, the ex boyfriend all looked like idiots."

"I want my 9 minutes back. If I wanted to see this I could have watched Jerry Springer"

"For those interested in the singing part, I clipped it out, amped it up some, and added a bit of reverb; you can download it here"

[Smashing]

I vote real.

[milowent]

The story is really spreading today, the Associated Press has an article out about it now. It does appear it was a real breakup.

Houston Chronicle with the AP story (one of many papers carrying it online right now):
www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4570395.html

[Terryfic]

If I understand the story right and he told that massive crowd of people before hand that he was really dumping her then I’m gonna have to say fake. When Jessica first selected 5 people for the phorum 3 one of them immediately went running to Bree to tell her what was up. I cannot believe that 3000+ people could keep this a secret

Edit. After reading the AP story it sounds like they broke up and then decided to do this to see what kind of story they could create.

[flwright]

I can't believe he produced this whole thing and then frowned through most of it. Of course, my record on figuring out vlogging reality is dismal.

FLWright

[Smashing]

word spread through facebook. The girl wasn't on facebook. And she didn't go to that school. I think it's entirely possible that nobody in that crowd (3000+? The guy says "a thousand" in the video, but it looks like a few hundred) knew her or how to contact her. The stunt was only planned three weeks in advance, so she didn't have to be kept out of the loop for long. Also I'm not sure she didn't find out and showed up anyway just to tell him off like she did.

People seem to think the argument was staged because they weren't more emotional? It did seem like the Jerry Springer show, but people think that's fake too, and it's not. People act differently when they are in front of a crowd than if they were arguing in private.

[milowent]

FAKE:

www.newsobserver.com/102/story/547661.html

Couple come clean: Breakup fake
A UNC-Chapel Hill senior and an NCSU sophomore weren't even dating

No, the electronically infamous breakup in UNC-Chapel Hill's Pit wasn't real.
UNC-CH senior Ryan Burke admitted Monday it was just a scripted experiment he thought up to show the power of Internet communities.

He and a roommate also wanted to get attention for a company they'd like to start to promote musicians.

In fact, Burke, of Charlotte, never dated Mindy Moorman, the N.C. State University sophomore who grew up in Charlotte and who appears in the Valentine's Day video that has become a hit on video-sharing site YouTube. She's been dating someone else for two years.

During the past week, neither Burke nor Moorman would say for sure whether the breakup was real. What wasn't an illusion were the more than 747,000 hits on YouTube, plus coverage from local and national media.

But on Monday, both said it was all staged. They were acting out characters, Burke said. In fact, Burke said, he and other friends have staged fake breakups in local bars before to get people's reactions.

The two told the Observer they were supposed to come clean during an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America" today but the segment was cancelled.

"The fact that actual news agencies are interested was a surprise," Burke said. "We did think it would get some media attention, but not from those outlets [such as newspapers]."

The whole thing began when Burke advertised the "breakup" on the online social network Facebook. More than 1,300 people said they planned to watch him dump Moorman, whom he said in interviews he'd dated for four months. On Facebook, he said Moorman had cheated on him.

Burke said he and his friends tried to contact Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" to see whether the show would film the segment. The show's "fake news" is popular among college students. But he never heard from producers, he said.

In the video, hundreds of people could be seen crowding around Burke and Moorman in the Pit, a popular UNC-CH gathering spot.

Burke said Monday that he thought a video of the event might end up on the Internet but had no idea it would generate such interest.

So far, he said, reaction demonstrates how popular Web communities such as Facebook have become.

Burke, 22, said he wanted to show that the media "don't always accurately gauge what teenage and college kids are interested in."

Neither regrets doing it, though Moorman said Monday that if she had to do it again, she wouldn't curse so much.

"I would do it again in a heartbeat," she said.

[Smashing]

D'OH! Score one for Milo. Minus one for Smashing. ouch. I got punk'd.

It's a little disappointing that since it was a stunt, it didn't have much of a point beyond itself. Once they had the media attention, they could've used it to speak out about something other than "look what you can do with facebook"...Oh well.

[hyemew]

I never understood the allure of this one to begin with. The media went crazy over it, it was on the main pages of AOL.com, yahoo, etc. When I did watch the video, I was like "that's it?" Despite the many cameras there, you couldn't hear what the Sirens were singing first, when they got down to it early on you could tell he was yelling, but it was hard to tell exactly what was going on. The main thing caught on tape that you could actually hear was the fighting that ensued afterwards, which in many ways made the guy doing the breaking up look worse than her for cheating. In fact I think a lot of people ended up sympathizing with her, even though those at the event clearly didn't with them allegedly chanting "whore" at her (not that I was able to hear that either).
It all seemed a lot to do about not much.

The thing I didn't get the most though? "The whole thing began when Burke advertised the "breakup" on the online social network Facebook. "
OK, so 1300 facebook people KNEW this event was for him to break up with her, yet word NEVER got out to her? Facebook is a place where there are no secrets! Also with the newsfeed option, presuming he created an event called "I'm going to dump my girlfriend" I bet it would indeed catch on like wildfire as it did. In reality she'd know in about 5 seconds and the jig would be up. Furthermore, seeing as they would obviously be facebook friends, the "newsfeed" which appears when you sign in shows everything your friends have done recently, including creating events. So that means when his gf logged in, she'd see something telling her "your boyfriend created a group WATCH ME BREAK UP WITH MY GIRLFRIEND".

I never thought this was anything special, but of course the media is older and wouldn't know all these intricate ins and outs of facebook. I am a little surprised that those in attendance didn't seem to catch on the improbability of what they were witnessing however and it wasn't more obvious it was fake. But ho hum, whatever!