Kate's Party gatecrashed by 60,000 Facebook users

A screen grab from the original Kate's Party Facebook event.

Notorious party boy Corey Worthington appeared to have met his match after more than 60,000 Facebook users invited themselves to fellow Australian Kate Miller's birthday party.

But the joke may in fact be on the gatecrashers as the entire meme - and Miller herself - has now been revealed to be the brainchild of Adelaide-based serial online prankster David Thorne.

The web kicked into gear after learning of the Facebook event "Kate's Birthday Party", which was billed as a small gathering of friends in an apartment but, crucially, the event was not closed, so anyone could invite new attendees.

David Thorne.

The Facebook page for the May 1 event was created on Saturday and garnered 5000 attendees in 10 minutes, growing to 60,000 overnight. By the time the group was shut down by Facebook there were a further 180,000 people who had been invited but not yet confirmed.

Over 500 related Facebook groups sprung up around the party, such as "Who needs a ride to Kate's party", "Which turban should I wear to Kate's", "I hope there's more than one toilet in kate's apartment", "I have enough cheese & crackers for 8 ppl, do you think that's enough for Kates", "Flight QF785 to Kates Party", "Kate's afterparty" and "It's actually a surprise party don't tell kate!!".

The description for the original event was quickly altered as its popularity grew: "WTF?????????? WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE? WHY ARE THERE 10000 PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN INVITED?????? THIS IS A PRIVATE PARTY AT OUR APARTMENT."

There's now an entire website, KatesParty.com, and a Twitter feed, with people sending in "fanpics" of themselves holding up posters saying "I'm Going to Kate's Party".

The original event page has now been removed from Facebook but several unofficial Kate's Party events are being planned in Australian capital cities for Saturday.

Of course, as with any popular internet meme, there's also a t-shirt on sale emblazoned with the fake photo of Kate used on the Facebook event and the words "I went to Kates Party".

Thorne, who runs the highly popular prankster site 27bslash6.com, came clean when contacted by this website today, saying he constructed the Facebook event as "a bit of pointless fun" to entertain people over the weekend.

Word of the fake party first began to spread virally after Thorne published a link to the event on his Twitter page. "Yay. Kate's having a party in her small apartment. Hit attending & give the host an aneurysm," Thorne's tweet read.

"It took me five minutes to set it up so it would entertain a few people over the weekend," said Thorne.

"I didn't expect there to be 500+ Facebook groups about it and there's also a website called katesparty.com, and they've organised a nationwide party starting at 6pm [on Saturday] in every state."

Thorne said he was impressed with how quickly Facebook acted to shut the event down.

"Usually when stuff goes awry on Facebook it takes them several days to do anything about it, so I think it shows that they're stepping up to the plate," he said.

Thorne's hilarious pranks have entertained internet users for years and he has recently collated the best of them in a new book, The Internet is a Playground.

While the entire birthday party event was a hoax, it illustrates the risks posed by failing to double-check privacy settings on Facebook. Many have found out the hard way by winding up on failbook.com.

Julian Cole, digital strategist at The Conscience Organisation, said the Kates Party meme illustrated how users were becoming more adept at using the platform and creating viral web hits.

Cole himself believed the event was a real party until he was informed it was a prank by this website.

"[But] for users who don't have such a great understanding of the platform they can sometimes fall into these traps where this could happen ... it's very Corey Worthington-esque - I'm sure that this happens a lot," said Cole.

Asher Moses @'The Age'

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