Want a surge in traffic or attention? Stage a hoax. What's the line between hoax and fraud? That's a question for lawyers, as is the legality of selling your underage daughter's hand in marriage, the false pretense of which caused a 1709 percent surge in search traffic for MarryOurDaughter.com, according to Yahoo.
Snopes had them figured out as early as August, though. Before it was more publicly unmasked as a hoax by the Buzz Index reveals most of the search traffic, as of Sunday, is coming from a very specific region of the country: Utah and Wyoming, especially, followed by Idaho and Montana.
"Whether that's from outrage—or interest—we can't say," writes Molly McCall, and we're not going to venture a guess either.
But it is fascinating that the sparsely populated Western states showed much more interest – or outrage – than the Midwest, South, and Northeast.
No comments yet. Be the first to comment!