Here’s an odd one. Popular BitTorrent site TorrentReactor has announced that it has “bought” a small Russian town, Gar, for just under $150,000, and that the town will rename itself in honor of the site. Sounds like a bunch of nonsense, right? It kind of is, but then it kinda of isn’t, too. Oh dear.
First, you cannot just “buy” a town in Russia. You certainly cannot rename a town on a whim. Apparently you need the express permission of the Russian president to do that.
That said, it seems as is there’s some truth to the matter.
Gar isn’t exactly a bustling metropolis (it’s actually quite difficult to find information on the town; here’s its location on a map), and a couple of extra rubles in investment certainly wouldn’t hurt. The roads there, for example, could use a bit of work.
Now the onus is on TorrentReactor to do something. No, it can’t buy the town, and it cannot rename the town in its image, but it can come up with some money to help out.
Let this be a lesson to would-be pranksters: unless you fully intend to carry out your aims (here, buying a small town in order to help it out), you’d do well to keep quiet. Because now TorrentReactor will look mighty silly leaving Gar high and dry.