The Great OnLine Chimp Project.

I must say, this one took me by surprise. In yesterday’s article I suggested that we all start creating chimpanzee accounts on facebook, in an attempt to discover how long it would take for advertisers to start targeting chimps.

Much to my surprise, people started creating chimpanzee accounts on facebook, in an attempt to discover how long it would take for advertisers to start targeting chimps. I honestly hadn’t expected this.

So I must take this opportunity to thank mongychops and Theoban, who can normally be found on b3ta.com for acting as midwives to this experiment.

At this point I felt obliged to get involved, and duly created the account for Noam Chimpsky. The trickle of new chimps soon became a slightly larger trickle, and before long I noticed that somebody had created a fan page for “Primitive Tools,” which are very important for the young chimp about town.

Since then more fan pages, and a chimp group have been set up, and I’ve long since lost track of who these damned chimps are in real life. The whole project is working exactly like facebook for humans, except that the status updates tend to revolve around termites, hitting things with sticks, screaming, and so forth.

And we’ve already had a false positive, with Clyde Chimperson sending  a screen grab of an advertisement for a facebook game based on animals. I’m sorry to say that this doesn’t count as specifically chimp targeted advertising, as the game, and its promotional campaign, existed prior to our experiment beginning.

It really wouldn’t be a stretch for me to point out that this experiment is the most important event in the history of the internet. Also the implications for both sociology and economics are on a scale not seen since the heady days when young Marx and Engels were scribbling away furiously.

However, we still need more chimps. This is your opportunity to advance the interests of both humans and our closest relatives, as well as engaging in the only experiment involving chimps that doesn’t actually involve the ludicrous expense of buying chimps, feeding chimps, housing chimps, and defending yourself from idiotic animal rights nutters.

Create a chimp today. If not for my sake, then for the sake of your children.

See you on facebook.