A few years back, my friends and I sort of had our own version of “Rickrolling”, but instead of tricking someone into listening to Rick Astley, we substituted “Never Gonna Give You Up” with Fly Young Red’s brilliant, “Throw That Boy Pussy”. It was quite hilarious, but like all jokes, it eventually ran its course. However, I wanted to squeeze just one more trap out of it, but the problem is that we have all become so paranoid because of all of the previous attempts, that it was getting near impossible to get someone to blindly click a link, so I needed to devise a way for someone to go to a website on their own, without clicking the link, which is when I came up with the idea for Hal.Golf.
Hal.Golf is a fake golf merchandise brand with a real logo and website that I designed and created. I began with the logo, and then had it printed up onto a custom golf club bag by Vessel (side note: I happened to be shopping for a new golf bag right around that time, which also helped spur the joke on), and I then took my good friend Reifsnyder – aka Reify – out golfing. I showed him the bag, he agreed that the logo/bag was rad, and we both had a good time drinking and hacking away.
After the introduction of the logo, my next step was to have it printed up on some merchandise, so I had a small batch of Nike golf hats embroidered with the logo and again invited Reify out golfing and presented him with one, and told him I was thinking of selling these online, and perhaps some other merchandise, in order to plant the seed. Reify is big into fashion, and one of the reasons he loves golf is the clothing and the ability to accessorize, so I knew the idea of custom merchandise would be right up his alley.
I then spent the next week or so building the website. I had already purchased the domain name for hal.golf, and the website was meant to be a detailed “Coming Soon” page featuring some of the merchandise that I would be selling on the site. So I created mockups in Photoshop of golf balls, tees, hats, and shirts, all featuring the Hal.Golf logo. They looked pretty real, but all are fake:
The final steps were all about timing. I waited until Reify was at work, and then I texted him about the new Hal.Golf website at https://hal.golf and told him to check it out. From there, I knew two things would happen:
- Reify would check out the Hal.Golf site and would think it was awesome.
- Reify would ask me if he could get a website like that, with Reify.golf as the domain.
And it of course went exactly like that. And I of course had already bought the domain for reify.golf and redirected it to the YouTube video of “Throw That Boy Pussy”, so the final stages of the game went down like this:
- I told Reify I would be happy to build him a website, but I didn’t know if the domain was available, so he should check it out and let me know.
- He immediately visited http://reify.golf on his work computer.
- The domain immediately redirected and started playing, “Throw That Boy Pussy” from his computer speakers.
- Stevie Pills – his boss and mutual friend of ours who had been subjected to this song for years at this point – comes running in and yells at him for playing that song at work, which I knew he would.
- Reify got got, lol.
It was a long game, but a small price to pay for the smiting of one’s friends. Who wins? Hal wins.
