An online prank 5 years in the making surfaced over the weekend as J-pop fans and otaku discovered that a seemingly obvious web address led to some not-so-obvious places.
Come into Mayu's deep love core ... oopswrongfandom
News sources reported that the domain “akb48.com” was up for grabs on Yahoo! Auction Japan, with a starting bid of OVER 9000 10 million yen, or about $120,000 IN AMERICA. Now, I’ve heard of some AKB48 goods selling for crazy-ass prices (one would need to put down around $200 to legitimately own the ENTIRE contents of No Sleeves’ 1st album—seeing as the A, B, C and Regular editions each have individual exclusive tracks) but it would take a stupid ass wota of an entirely different financial caliber to make this purchase.
Not that this has anything to do with official AKB48 management—the group’s actual site, as even the most BEGINNER of fans should know, is found at akb48.co.jp, using the traditional Japanese domain suffix. The .com location, on the other hand, is a much stranger entity, as curious visitors found out when they tried to access the site. Anyone who types akb48.com into their browser window … ends up in enemy territory.
