Big Rattler 77 FAMU Sex Tape
Who? Students at a “historically black college” “in Florida”, implied to be Florida A&M University (FAMU).
Real? The video was real, but it was a professional porn video not shot at FAMU or featuring FAMU students.
DareDorm.com is a porn paysite in the Reality Kings network. Every two weeks or so, DareDorm posts a new hardcore video supposedly depicting a sex party in a college dorm somewhere. The site does not identify specific colleges, just a state.
The site’s masthead claims, “DareDorm is the first site where u can make $10,000 dollars for submitting your college dorm room antics.” The premise is that these are amateur-produced videos featuring real college students, filmed in their own dorm rooms, submitted to DareDorm in hopes of winning $10,000. In fact, all the videos are professionally produced by Reality Kings with paid performers. (Our apologies if that ruined the erotic illusion for anyone.)
The February 12, 2010, new episode at DareDorm was titled “Hanging Out”, supposedly set at an unidentified college “in Florida” and submitted by “Big Rattler 77″. The blurb further identified the setting as a “historically black college”.
Dare Dorm "Hanging Out" - Big Rattler 77 - FAMU sex tape fake
Dare Dorm - Big Rattler 77 sex tape - not FAMU students
Several clues pointed to the implied location being Florida A&M University (FAMU). It’s a historically black university in Florida. The dorm room set is decorated with FAMU’s traditional orange and green. There’s a FAMU clock on the wall. And FAMU’s sports teams are known as the Rattlers.
On March 2, 2010, the DareDorm video went viral around the blogosphere, gossip sites and Twitter. It was widely (and mistakenly) reported to be an amateur sex tape made by FAMU students.
Motivated by defending the good name of HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities), blogger Bee Michelle at Vividly Bland quickly debunked the “amateur FAMU student sex tape” story. She even managed to identify some of the performers from one’s Facebook page.
They are paid actor’s who are competing to win $10,000 from dormdare.com. This is an actual porn. Real. Authentic. Just NOT from FAMU or in a FAMU dorm nor does it involve FAMU students.
Still a bit gullible on the “competing to win $10,000″ part of DareDorm’s fiction, but for the most part this was an outstanding bit of amateur investigative journalism.
A hilarious followup article at Vividly Bland listed several tipoffs “that the FAMU sextape isn’t REAL & that it HAD to be paid actors”. For example: “Who eats doritos off of a nipple?? Can we get some chocolate syrup??”
The mainstream media picked up the story with far less accuracy. Tallahassee TV station WCTV ran a story on March 16 which incorrectly called the video “an amateur pornographic video” with no mention of its origins on a porn paysite. Laughably, the WCTV journalist writes, “We did some investigative research and found pictures taken the day of the sex tape …” In other words, we ripped off a blogger’s research without credit and STILL got our facts wrong.
Meanwhile, FAMU officials learned of the video and threatened DareDorm parent company RK Netmedia with a lawsuit. DareDorm removed the “Hanging Out”/Big Rattler 77 video from the site. In early April, RK Netmedia agreed to pay FAMU $120,000 to settle the lawsuit.