Christopher Bodeen of the Associated Press filed a report about Sex and Shanghai, the Internet scandal du jour: the blog of a philandering English teacher in Shanghai. Excerpt:
[A] person responding to an e-mail to a contact address on the site said the authors were a group of performance artists who had fabricated its content as an investigation into online vigilante behavior.
“We did not anticipate quite the level of anger this would raise,” said the message, which said the authors behind the cyber name “Chinabounder” included a British man, an Australian woman, two Chinese men and a Japanese woman.
If Chinabounder is not a hoax, this explanation is a wise PR move by Mr Sexpat.
But if Chinabounder really is a group of performance artists, they have committed an extraordinary act of e gao (ζΆζ – spoofing / satire) on the angry professor behind the campaign to out and oust the blogger.
UPDATE: Shanghaiist has the latest information on the Bounder hunt.
- AP story on Sydney Morning Herald: Chinese Internet users hunt author of racy blog, but alleged authors claim a hoax
- Virtual China: Trying to understand spoofing culture in Virtual China
- ESWN The immoral foreign blogger