If you thought forking up a couple thousand bucks to attend SXSW was just about the music, tech demos, movies, free food and booze, you are mistaken. Plenty of festival goers have an ulterior motive here in Austin: to get busy. Bang With Friends made rounds last month when it encouraged Facebook users to select friends they’re secretly wanting to hook up with and match make – and now the developers have created a spinoff in the form of Bang With SXSW.
Unlike the original Bang With Friends, the SXSW edition allows festival goers attending the event to see other users who’ve registered for the special edition app – even if they are not Facebook friends. The app will also display names and profile photos to help those looking to get laid find their potential partner for the night. Bang With Friends co-founder anonymously going by the name C says approximately 3,560 SXSW’ers have signed up, leaving plenty of opportunities to find someone drunk enough for a one night stand.
Still, SXSW organizers weren’t impressed. They sent Bang With SXSW a cease and desist letter, citing the app’s promotional posters as too lewd and controversial, and the site’s original domain of sxsw.bangwithfriends.com as an unapproved use of the festival’s name. The SXSW team worked fast to remove the “inappropriate” posters, but so did BWF developers. Not long after they received warning from SXSW, the site reappeared at austin13.bangwithfriends.com. ”We didn’t feel they had a strong case, but wanted to make a gesture of good will so we set it up at the new URL,” C tells us.”We just want to give the people what they want!”
The new domain also adds a small disclaimer, noting that ”Bang With Friends is in no way condoned or affiliated with SXSW – in fact, it turns out they are not big fans of bangin.” Whoops.
If you’re in town and are interested in the service, Bang With SXSW has a friendly reminder to practice safe sex. The team has been handing out branded condoms to encourage a healthy sex life, but you might want to check out the Qpid app that can verify a person’s sexually transmitted disease status, just to be safe.
C said that as of today, Bang With SXSW has successfully created 221 hook ups, with numbers expecting to rise as the music portion of the festival continues and more drunk hipsters flood town. Who says geek spring break can’t get raunchy?
An avid gadgets and Internet culture enthusiast, Natt Garun spends her days bringing you the funniest, coolest, and strangest news in tech to make the information overload a bit more digestible. She joined Digital Trends as staff writer after spending five months in Hong Kong and formerly working as an assistant travel writer. Her published works can also be found on Business Insider and Gizmodo. Natt hails from S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University with a degree in magazine journalism. E-mail her at ngarun@digitaltrends.com or tweet her @nattgarun.
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