Recently, a Vietnamese man courted controversy and infamy after posting a picture of his passport with the name ‘Phuc Dat Bich’. He complained that his Facebook page kept being shut down in light of his name sounding mildly ridiculous, and became an internet sensation in the process.
SBS has now found out that this was all a hoax that started as a joke but ended up raising awareness for people with different sounding names worldwide.
The man, who identified himself as an Australian named ‘Joe Carr’, revealed everything on Facebook after SBS found out that his name was highly unlikely to be real, given the name Bich was never used as a Vietnamese surname. His troll was so convincing that news organisations the world over ran his story.