Suntukan sa Ace Hardware ( en, Brawl at Ace Hardware / Fistfight at Ace Hardware) was a
Facebook event that took place on April 15, 2016, at an
Ace Hardware
Ace Hardware Corporation is an American hardware retailers' cooperative based in Oak Brook, Illinois, United States. It is the world's largest hardware retail cooperative, and the largest non-grocery American retail cooperative.
Founded in 1924 ...
branch in
SM City Lucena in
Lucena, Quezon, supposedly for a free-for-all
fistfighting
Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermined ...
match. Thousands of
Filipino netizens responded "going" on the event's page, which attracted attention from local news sources and made the event into an
Internet meme
An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...
.
Background
The event was created as a
shitpost by the Facebook page "Bulbulito Balagbag: tuberong kulay green", whose name is a crude
Tagalog
Tagalog may refer to:
Language
* Tagalog language, a language spoken in the Philippines
** Old Tagalog, an archaic form of the language
** Batangas Tagalog, a dialect of the language
* Tagalog script, the writing system historically used for Tagal ...
reference to
pubic hair
Pubic hair is terminal body hair that is found in the genital area of adolescent and adult humans. The hair is located on and around the sex organs and sometimes at the top of the inside of the thighs. In the pubic region around the pubis bon ...
, some time in March 2016.
More than 54,000 Facebook users said that they would go to the event, while around 36,000 expressed interest.
Response
On March 31,
Ace Hardware Corporation denied any involvement in the event. Netizens mockingly expressed their "disappointment" over the advisory, saying that they cancelled prior commitments, such as weddings and even a childbirth, to attend the event.
Leigh Reyes, President and COO of MullenLowe Philippines, an advertising agency, criticized Ace Hardware's stern reaction to the tongue-in-cheek event, saying that disavowing any involvement and condemning those who organized the stunt is not an effective business strategy, but fame is. Reyes suggested using the ensuing publicity to their strategic advantage by offering discounts to actual attendees, for example.
On April 4 and 11, 2016, Ace Hardware posted a countdown and released a poster for the fictitious event on their official Facebook page. On April 15, the day of the scheduled brawl, Ace Hardware prepared a small mock boxing ring where customers could take photos. The date also coincidentally fell within a 3-day mallwide sale at
SM City Lucena.
See also
*
Josh fight
*
Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us
Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us, also known as the Raid on Area 51 or simply the Area 51 Raid, was an American Facebook event and series of music festivals that took place on and around September 20, 2019, in the desert surrounding A ...
– a similar satirical Facebook event
*
International State College of the Philippines – a fictional university that went viral through a Facebook satire page
References
April 2016 events in the Philippines
2010s fads and trends
2016 in Internet culture
2016 in the Philippines
Facebook
Internet memes introduced in 2016
Satirical works
Internet memes introduced from the Philippines
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