Dub the Dew

Overview

Dub the Dew was an online contest to name a new green apple-infused Mtn Dew drink on the website DubTheDew.com. The contest was raided by 4chan users who flooded the poll with joke names and subsequently hacked the website's front page.

Background

On August 13th, 2012, an anonymous 4chan^[1] user submitted a post calling for others to vote the names "Hitler did nothing wrong" and "Gushing Granny" to the top of the Dub the Dew^[10] contest page. Prior to being archived, the thread received over 550 replies. The same day, the contest page was submitted in a post to the /r/funny^[2] subreddit titled "4chan Names the new Mountain Dew", which reached the front page accumulating over 11,250 up votes and 1,750 comments within 24 hours.

Notable Developments

Hacks

Shortly after the raid began on August 13th, the name "Hitler did nothing wrong" was voted to the #1 spot and the site was hacked with a scrolling marquee that read "Mtn Dew salutes the Israeli Mossad for demolishing 3 towers on 9/11!", a video "RickRoll" and a pop up box that read “le 9gag are legion”.

Bronies Join the Raid

Also on August 13th, the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic news blog Equestria Daily^[4] published a post titled "Mountain Dew Naming Contest", which urged readers to vote the name "Applejack" on the contest page. The instructions were reposted to MLP Forums^[5], which soon led to AppleJack reaching the #2 spot in the poll. The same day, the viral content site BuzzFeed^[6] published a post titled "Bronies' Dew Dreams Dashed", which reported that 4chan users managed to push Applejack off the top 10 leaderboard prior to the suspension of the contest.

News Media Coverage

The day of the raid on August 13th, the Internet news blog HyperVocal^[17] published an article titled "4chan Trolls Take Over Mountain Dew 'Dub the Dew' Campaign", which compared the raid to other 4chan operations such as the Race Guy Hot Topic online smear campaign.. The same day, Gawker^[7] writer Neetzan Zimmerman wrote an article titled "Mountain Dew Asks Internet to Name Its New Drink, 4chan Happily Obliges", reporting that Mountain Dew took down the contest page after discovering it had been hacked. Also on August 13th, the story was reblogged by The Huffington Post^[8], Geekosystem^[9] and Mashable.^[13] On the following day, the advertising news blog Ad Week^[14] published a post titled "Mountain Dew's Soda-Naming Contest Crashed by Pranksters", comparing the raid to Something Awful's successful prank involving Walmart Energy Sheets promotion with the rapper Pitbull.

Mountain Dew's Response

On August 14th, 2012, Mountain Dew responded to a tweet by @AntDeRosa about the contest, admitting it had "lost to The Internet" and the contest was only a local customer program.

@antderosa Dub the Dew definitely lost to The Internet. It was a local customer program, not a Dew one, & we're helping them clean up

— Mountain Dew® (@mtn_dew) August 14, 2012

Search Interest

External References