The Great Toothing Hoax
About a year ago 'Toothing' was the hot new thing everyone was talking about (well, okay, that a few people were talking about). It was the idea that people were using bluetooth-equipped mobile phones to find sexual partners in public places such as commuter trains. Toothers would beam messages to other people with mobile phones, 'Hey, wanna hook up?'... and if the answer was affirmative then off the two would go. This practice got a lot of media attention, but it's turned out that it was all a hoax dreamed up by Ste Curran and friends. He tells the story here. He decided to spill the beans after people on Slashdot (Jim Hanas in particular) started wondering what had ever become of the toothing craze. Jim contacted Curran, who was the creator of the original toothing forum, and got the confession. Curran states that: Despite all the made-up ramblings on websites across the globe, despite the forums and the fan-fiction, the tabloids and the broadsheets, the perverts and the simply curious, no-one has ever ever, ever toothed. There's always the possibility that toothing was real and Curran is lying when he now says that it was a hoax, but given the two options I think it seems more plausible that toothing was always a hoax.
