The schoolgirl had only planned a quiet celebration with a small group of friends to celebrate her 16th birthday party. When Merthe Weusthuis organised the gathering at her family home, she sent out invitations via the Facebook social networking site. But she made one mistake – she forgot to mark the event as “private”. As details began to circulate, a trickle of acceptances became a flood – and on Friday night the event turned into a large-scale disturbance as 5,000 gatecrashers clashed with riot police outside the Weusthuis family home, on a quite suburban street in a small Dutch town. This was not how it was supposed to be.
An unauthorised campaign was launched to promote the birthday party, reaching high levels of sophistication with the setting-up of a website, as well as a Twitter account which received hundreds of thousands of hits. Over the following days the party become known as “Project X Haren” – inspired by the film “Project X”, released this year, in which three high school students throw a birthday party which spirals out of control.
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