Practical jokes on the Internet

[jducoeur]

Y'know, there's a worthwhile sociological experiment to be done: spread the word that Nigeria doesn't really exist -- it's just a hoax invented for the purpose of fake Internet rumors. Anything you hear about Nigeria is, by definition, false.

The Net is just primed for this. I bet a fair number of people would believe it...

Comments

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Ooooooo

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Of course it doesn't exist. I've never seen it. Same for all of Africa.

And your bathroom downstairs.

[hungrytiger]

An African country whose name is an obvious play on a racial slur was clearly just invented for bad net humor.

[dsrtao]

OK.

[runolfr.livejournal.com]

So the reason there's no oil coming from Nigeria is that there is no Nigeria... interesting. But where was the oil supposedly coming from Nigeria before *really* coming from?

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

Yah. They obviously just took the real country of Niger and stuck -ia onto the end to make a plausible-sounding placename. How transparent.

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Nigeria: It's the new rick-roll.

[laurion]

So if anything I hear about it is false, so is this post?

How am I to spread word that something doesn't exist if it doesn't exist? I'll have to invent Nigeria just to say it doesn't exist. Hmm. That's a little too close to some theological dogmas.

[dryfoo.livejournal.com]

You know, it's funny you should mention this. After Britain ceded independence to her colonies in that region, around 1960, there was actually a unification movement that advocated for a federal nation to be called "Nigeria". It was supposed to include Northern Cameroon, Biafra, South Niger, the Yoruba Free State, and Lagos-Benin.

Internal squabbling between the three major political parties -- the Nigerian People's Congress, National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons, and the Action Group -- scuttled the idea. A series of conflicts (the Lagos Delta war, the Biafran insurgency, etc etc etc) discredited all of the pro-unification advocates, and by 1963 the modern borders were pretty much set.

There's still a small pro-unity political group in the region, called the "419s" (named for the UN Security Council Resolution 419, which was to have recognized a "Greater Nigeria") but they have been plagued by corruption in their ranks, and don't have much credibility.

The idea is one of history's interesting might-have-beens.