I always assume the worst will happen when companies solicit ideas from the Internet. For the latest evidence of this, look no further than this Mountain Dew "Dub the Dew" fiasco. An effort by a restaurant to crowdsource a name for an upcoming homemade green-apple-flavored Mountain Dew concoction has been hijacked, Pitbull style. Suddenly, its gallery of suggestions featured such winners as "Gushing Granny," "Diabeetus," and my personal favorite, "Fapple." As of Tuesday morning, dubthedew.com is no longer bringing up any content whatsoever—we're told it is down for good. While this comes on the heels of Something Awful's successful online vote-rigging operation for Walmart's Energy Sheets promotion with Pitbull, it seems a different set of neckbeards was responsible for hacking the Dew campaign. Online communities 4chan and Reddit are hurling blame at each other as we speak, which is fitting, because both websites are basically elephant graveyards for jokes that Something Awful has outgrown. Photo above by zentraveler. Via Mashable.
UPDATE: Mountain Dew sent us the following statement:
"Dub the Dew," a local market promotional campaign that was created by one of our customers—not Mountain Dew—was compromised. We are working diligently with our customer's team to remove all offensive content that was posted and putting measures in place to ensure this doesn't happen again. Mountain Dew has a legacy of engaging its most loyal fans to tap innovative ideas for the brand through really successful programs like "DEWMocracy" and "Your Malt Dew" and so we sincerely apologize to all of our fans who may have been offended by this customer's program.
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