Chris Conty does not exist

Chris Conty does not exist. Just like Sam Lennov, Nico and his Goblin, LonelyGirl15 or Tony Sheraton (sounds familiar?). Chris Conty is a pure invention from French channel Canal + who will air next week a “rockumentary” about the “David Bowie from Belgium”.

However, since mid September 2006, there’s a wide range of websites, blogs, forums on this guy. And more than 40.000 entries on Google.

This incredible viral campign took the best of Web 2.0 to tell us a wonderful story and I must confess that I’ve been part of the believers. The huge thing is other artists (Michel Fugain, Nicolas Sirkis of Indochine, Axel Bauer, Thierry Ardisson, Marka and Laurence Bibot, Adamo…) and partners (Canal +, Universal, FNAC?, Amazon?) all played the game and fostered the buzz. Let’s see now if the documentary will talk about this “real fake” character or rather about this enormous joke.

A few more interesting URLs:

• The MySpace of Chris Conty
• Chris Conty official website leading the visitor to a Forum
• Chris Conty official website in Japanese (with fake Japanese commercials)
• The DVD on FNAC website
• … and on Amazon website (fr)
• Her cousine Fabienne Vandervaeren
• His page on Wikipedia

Since you know it’s a joke, find yourself the others…