Pool’s Closed

12-07-2006

…due to AIDS. You might have heard about it, or people call it ‘The great Habbo raid’. Basically it was a bunch of people (mostly bored white kids) dressing up as Afro-Americans with suits and blocking the entrance of the pool in US hotel. Reason being given that the moderators would be racist, not likely anyone really believed that. Or to protect the innocent children from AIDS.

Coming from a couple of online communities there were quite a few people, so disrupting the evening was successful. It spread to other rooms and private rooms, eventually to other hotels. For some odd reason (well, it being offensive) people also started to position themselves in the form of swastika’s. The attempt to disrupt the hotel was repeated a couple of times throughout the years, with more or less result. If this all sounds very eventful, do note for a regular user twas just not the evening to be in public rooms, and overall affairs, well, went on.

Even if the whole event is being mostly silly, what they did succeed at is create a sort of internet meme out of it, websites dedicated to it and all. You’re only oldskool if you know what it is and get the jokes about it. Well, now you do :p. Sulka Haro, Habbo’s lead concept designer, noted he’d like to buy a shirt some time.

His short analysis on the phenomenon btw: “I guess these are probably older users who used to think it was cool, but now are way too cool to come play. But they just want to get back inside. They’d probably be pissed about that”.