The man claimed to have been denied access to Facebook due to the social network’s “Real Name” policy, which had determined that he was a fake.
Phuc Dat Bich made waves on the internet after complaining about the Facebook policy, but now it turns out the whole thing was a prank after all.
Australian posts fake story to fool Facebook users and media sources
The prankster is actually Tin Le, a 23-year-old resident of Melbourne, Australia. He has now admitted that he digitally manipulated an Australian passport to show the name “Phuc Dat Bich” before selling the story to media sources around the world.
Just in case you hadn’t already noticed, the name reads phonetically as “Fuck That Bitch.” Tin Le claimed that the unfortunate name had seen him banned from Facebook on multiple occasions, and wrote an accompanying back story.
The story gained little traction when it was originally released in January this year, but it went viral in November. Even major news outlets including Sky News an the BBC ran the story as if it were true.
Journalists published story without confirmation on name
Alarm bells must surely have been ringing after the man known as Phuc Dat Bich consistently refused to give interviews, but journalists went ahead and published the story all the same. Now it turns out that not a single hack had found any confirmation that the name was real.
Tin Le later claimed that the prank was supposed to show the flaws in Facebook’s policy. “Facebook needs to understand that it is utterly impossible to legitimize a place where there will always be pranksters and tricksters. What started as a joke between friends, became a prank that made a fool out of the media and brought out the best in the people who reached out to me.
He later went on to criticize the media. “Out of this ordeal I’ve concluded not to trust the credibility of the media, it’s twisted by the hungry journalists who mask the truth … It goes to show that an average joe like myself can con the the biggest news sources with ease,” he wrote.
Gullible internet users beware, there may be another Phuc Dat Bich or Joe Carr just waiting to make you look silly.
