Netflix’s new documentary film series centered around unique and scandalous media moments in the 21st century, Trainwreck, takes us to the small town of Haren in the Netherlands this week, as we get to witness what had been termed “The Real Project X” in September of 2012. An innocent Facebook post by Merthe Weusthuis inviting her friends over for her 16th birthday blew up on the internet, leading to unthinkable situations panning out, ranging from the riot police being deployed to the entire town being vandalized and trashed. Despite being a fun and casual watch about the bizarre escalation of events, The Real Project X also serves as a reminder of the power of social media, which can do both good and bad at unprecedented levels.
Who is Merthe Weusthuis?
The Real Project X begins in 2024, in the Dutch town of Haren, as the central figure in this outlandish tale, Merthe Weusthuis, visits home. After the incident in 2012, Merthe had had to leave the Netherlands and settle elsewhere in Europe, not so much because of any legal or social trouble, but out of sheer embarrassment and shame. As she sits down for an interview at present, Merthe recalls that fateful day in 2012, when she thought of creating a Facebook event to invite her friends to her birthday party. While she was living with her parents in the affluent town of Haren, most of her days were spent in the nearby city of Groningen. Her closest friends, Iloe and Fenna, remember how they met and befriended the girl when she joined their volleyball team in the city. The three girls would practice together at the same gymnasium, and this is where their friendship developed and grew into a tight bond.
To people like Iloe and Fenna, i.e. those living in Groningen, the inhabitants of Haren always seemed a bit too rich, posh, and sometimes snobbish. Like at many other places in the world where neighboring towns are divided on the basis of economic class, the youngsters in Groningen and Haren felt that they had very little in common with each other. But this perception of Iloe and Fenna changed when they became friends with Merthe and realized that, despite coming from a richer family, she was more relatable to them than many of their city friends. Thus, when Merthe wanted to have a big party at her house for her 16th birthday, and she got the permission and support from her parents to host such an event, Iloe and Fenna were the first friends she thought of inviting.
But this was 2012, when social media was on the rise, and as Merthe admits, everyone posted everything about themselves on Facebook. Simply inviting friends personally to one’s party was not enough, as information about such a party being hosted also needed to be put out on social media. Besides, Merthe was turning 16 in just a few days, which is considered a cause for great celebration in the Netherlands, as 16 is the legal age of drinking. Merthe wanted to make a big announcement on her Facebook profile, as she admits that she was already enjoying the game of getting likes, which was already being used as social currency at the time. She wanted her friends and everyone in her friends list to feel that she was a cool kid, and thus, she created a Facebook event for her birthday party.
This event page mentioned the date, time, and location of the party, which was being held at her house, and it also had her phone number on it so that her friends could contact her directly if needed. However, at one of the most crucial stages of the creation of this event page, Merthe did not quite understand the two options given to her by Facebook, and she chose to make the event public instead of private. This basically meant that those she had originally invited could forward invites to her party to their own friends, without Merthe having any control over the invites. Without thinking much of it, she sent invitations to the event to 78 people, all friends whom she knew well enough and wanted to have at her birthday party. However, much to her shock, the number of invites and confirmed attendees kept growing with every passing minute, and her 16th birthday party was about to be hijacked by youngsters who wanted to have their own “Project X”.
What is “Project X”?
“Project X,” a film that had been released only a few months earlier, in March 2012, played a crucial, although indirect, role in what eventually happened in September in Haren. Directed by Nima Nourizadeh in the found-footage style, “Project X” is about a day in the lives of three high school students, Costa, JB, and Thomas. The boys are considered stereotypical ‘losers’ by everyone around, not just by their peers at school but also by the parents, who believe that they lack the courage and bravado to even get involved in the silly escapades that teenagers usually get in trouble for. Therefore, when Thomas’ parents leave the house to them for an entire weekend, and Thomas’ birthday also happens to be on the very same day that they leave, the boys decide to have a party bigger than any that the teenagers at their school have ever experienced.
Costa, JB, and Thomas start inviting anyone and everyone they can, and it is later revealed that some of them had even announced the party on the local radio network and on Craigslist. Not only is the entire school invited, but the students are also allowed, or rather they make up their minds, to bring friends of their own. The three boys arrange for some marijuana, and in the process end up stealing a stash of MDMA pills from the dealer. In an effort to impress Kirby, the girl he has a crush on, Thomas spares no expense and prepares for the biggest party of the century. He even hires two youngsters to be security personnel, who later prove to be useless, and informs his neighbors about the party, so that they are not caught off-guard.
However, things begin to get out of control once the party begins, as thousands of teenagers flock to the house, even barging into parts of the house that Thomas had initially set as out of bounds for the guests. Eventually, one of the neighbors calls the police on the teenagers, and this sets in motion a horrific chain of events that makes the event widely covered by mainstream news. Large groups of the teenagers riot in protest against the police, Thomas’ drug dealer sets fire to his house in revenge for the stolen MDMA pills, and a guest even drives his father’s expensive Mercedes into the pool, totaling it. Ultimately, arrests are also made by the police, but despite the crazy consequences, Costa, JB, and Thomas get a lot of attention from the media. Most importantly, they are now loved and revered by everyone at school, which had been their main intention all along.
Quite expectedly, “Project X” had become a huge hit among youngsters, and along with doing immense business, the film also quickly started making a serious cultural impact. Youngsters from all over the United States started throwing extravagant parties with huge guest lists, with only one intention in mind—to match the scale, intensity, and crazy chaos of the party shown in “Project X.” Therefore, when teenagers at Merthe’s school in Haren started finding out about her birthday party that was a public event according to the Facebook page, they were convinced to turn it into a Dutch recreation of “Project X.” Incidentally, this would not be the only attempt to recreate the events of the American film in a foreign country, as similar attempts were made in several countries, like in Mexico and Argentina.
How did ‘Project X Haren’ come into being?
Merthe’s birthday party event page on Facebook was shared with more than 3500 people in the first few hours of its creation by the youngsters at her school who just wanted to party and hardly knew the girl. But Merthe enjoyed the attention and even tweeted about the matter, still believing that people were just joking and that the craze would die down in a few hours. Instead of stopping, though, people kept spreading the invite to even more of their friends and acquaintances, and the number of invitees crossed 10,000. Merthe wanted to delete the event page right then, realizing that things were getting out of control, but could not do so on her phone, as a page or event could be deleted only on the desktop version of Facebook. By the time she managed to delete it in the evening, there were close to 20,000 invitees on the page.
However, Merthe had simply deleted the page too late, as thousands had learned about her birthday party by this time, and many of them would not agree to back down. One such youngster was 18-year-old Jorik Clarck from Groningen, who was extremely disappointed when the event page was suddenly taken down, as he had been enthusiastically following the increase in guests and hoped that it would blow up even more. Realizing that Merthe must have deleted the page, Jorik created a copycat event at Merthe’s residential address, but he directly named it ‘Project X: Haren,’ intending to make the birthday party appear like what it seemed to be—a perfect chance to recreate the party from “Project X.”
This new page went viral even quicker than Merthe’s original event, and memes had much to do with this increasing popularity. People started making memes of all kinds about the party, and the number of invitees shot up to more than 30,000. By this time, Merthe managed to get hold of Jorik’s phone number through mutual friends and had her father call the teenager in order to bring the matter to a close. Jorik received the message very clearly, and he soon deleted the page that he had created. However, the damage was already done, and Jorik’s decision to create a copycat page had now shown the world that they too could do something like this.
Thus, within just a few hours of the deletion of Jorik’s page, a third page was created on Facebook, this time by someone running a fake profile. Although it was probably some youngster who thought the whole thing to be funny, the fact that their fake name had antisemitic words in it did not help the matter. By the day of the event, more than 300,000 people had been invited to it on the Facebook page, and Merthe’s phone number even got leaked in the process. People started printing t-shirts and billboards about the party, and local radio channels started calling Merthe up for clarification. The situation got so tense for her that she actually had to drive away from her own house on the afternoon of her birthday, along with her family, except for her father, who decided to stay back to ensure that the neighbors would not be disturbed because of his daughter’s mistake.
Finally, thousands of people started flocking towards the house, and eventually things got out of control when the youngsters got drunk and started desperately looking for a good time. The riot police had to be deployed, which irked the drunk teenagers even more, and full-fledged vandalizing and rioting began. A supermarket was broken into, and things were stolen, while cars were set ablaze, in a scene that scarily resembled “Project X.” There was even a rumor of two girls having died in a stampede, although this was soon debunked by the police, as nobody had been mortally injured.
How did the authorities react?
In order to cover every facet around ‘Project X Haren,’ Netflix’s The Real Project X also dives into the reaction from the authorities on that specific night, which was inadequate, to say the least. To begin with, Merthe’s parents had informed the Haren police about the birthday invitation that had gone viral on the very evening she had deleted the event page, but the authorities firstly did not understand the significance of this virality and then did not consider it to be alarming enough for them to interfere in. But as the event kept getting shared more and more over the next few days, and entertainment and news channels started talking about it, the authorities got a whiff of it as well.
Mariska, a councillor in the town of Haren, received an invitation to the party as well, along with the trailer for “Project X,” which immediately alarmed her. She figured out that there would be total chaos if such a party actually took place, and so she wanted the authorities to step in. Mariska quickly tried to take up the matter with the erstwhile mayor of Haren, Rob Bats, and tried calling him up. But as Bats was away on some meets at the time, he did not respond to her calls, and it was only a few days later that he invited Mariska to his office to discuss the matter. By this time, the mayor himself had learned about the massive party being planned, but much to Mariska’s shock, he’d chosen to not take it seriously, and Bats dismissed her concerns, stating that controlling teenagers would not be much of a task.
On the other side, another man named Chris felt that it was necessary for the authorities to step in and do something to divert the teenagers’ attention. As it so happened, Chris was the first elected Night Mayor of Groningen, an official municipal post that is basically responsible for safe and orderly operations with regard to nightlife in the city. Being well aware of what party-seeking humans, especially teenagers, can be like, Chris immediately got started on creating a distraction for the thousands who had signed up for the event. The only way to do so, according to him, was to arrange for an even bigger party just outside Groningen on the very same day so that teenagers would choose to go to this party instead of flocking to Merthe’s house address. Chris admits that he had almost made the entire arrangement for such a party and only needed Mayor Bats’ approval. However, the mayor once again refused to take the matter seriously, and so Chris’ distraction party was not approved. By the day of the party, the only step that the authorities had taken was to announce on their Facebook page, which had hardly any followers, that the party had officially been cancelled, and teenagers were ordered to not gather at the address in Haren.
What were the consequences of ‘Project X Haren’?
By the end of the night of September 21st, 36 individuals were seriously wounded, and 15 had been arrested by the police, according to the official statistics. Thousands of euros worth of property had been damaged, including street posts, city infrastructure such as public benches and bicycle stands, and a number of street shops that had been broken into and looted. A news reporter named Arnoud, who had been assigned to do live reporting from the scene of the party by his employees, recalls how his car had been smashed and torched by the angry mob that night as retaliation against the riot police. Two YouTubers named Thomas and Giel had decided to shoot events from the whole night for their new channel, Stuk tv, and their recording ultimately proved instrumental in catching the perpetrators responsible for the vandalism.
Thomas and Giel managed to record the faces of the teenagers who had broken into and looted the convenience stores, and this footage, which they uploaded on YouTube within a few hours, was used by the police to track down the young men. Meanwhile, some of the rioters, like Thomas, who appears in the Netflix documentary, realized their mistake the next morning and returned all the goods they had looted by themselves. In a positive use of the social media platform, for a change, Facebook was used to gather a group of responsible citizens who cleaned up the streets of Haren within a short time the next day and brought back order to the town. Ultimately, there was an official inquiry into the mayor and the police chief’s handling of the incident, and Mayor Rob Bats ultimately stepped down from his position in the face of the building public pressure against him. The youngsters involved in the bizarre incident also eventually realized how wrong they had been and admitted to feeling guilty in The Real Project X, while Merthe has forgiven most of them and has moved on with her life.
