Thisman.org – The Mystery Exposed

I came across a news on Yahoo yesterday and found out that the web has got a new buzz about a mysterious man who seems to appear in the dreams of thousands of people across the world. Sounds Weird ? – Check out the details at Thisman.org. With the type of interest that everyone of us have about weird and mysterious stuff it is not surprising that this story would go hot on the Internet.

Now while some people are actually taking it seriously and are expecting to uncover some really mysterious psychological phenomena, there are also enough voices that doubt it to be a marketing gimmick. Keeping this in mind, I thought of digging into the issue a little and here’s what I found.

a)The website mentions that the incident initiated when a “well-known psychiatrist in NY drew the face in 2006. It also mentions during the course of the events she forwarded this picture to other psychologists whose patients also identified the face to be in their dreams. – However, the website does not specify the names of any of the psychologists .

b)A quick look at the Who Is Records for the domain show that this domain is registered by some Andrea Natella from a Guerilla marketing agency in Italy. Check the screen shot below

c) The website mentions that its purpose is to connect people across the world who have dreamt of this man but on the site there is no option provided by which users can connect to each other. There is no proof that thousands of people have actually dreamt of this man, other than the declaration made by the site authorities.

d) Also there is no well defined contact information on the site. All you have is a contact form. If its actually a psychological research case, isn’t it natural for the site to provide details of doctors who are leading the research and should be contacted in case someones identifies the man ?

e) Also , the website sells Tshirts, mugs, magnets etc with the ma’s face on them. Don’t you think this is too silly an ecommerce activity to be associated with a serious psychology research case ? I don’t think a professional doctor would ever think of this, rather it smells of some savvy internet marketer.

With all these points noted, I am pretty sure that this is not a psychological phenomena and it is basically a well laid out viral marketing strategy, may be for some book, films etc. Probably, if they would have been a little more elaborate and careful about domain registration, and the contact information, it could have actually passed on to be real.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this.