Pavel Durov, the founder of Russian's social networking giant VKontakte (the so-called Russian Facebook), was bored last wekeend. So he decided to make paper airplanes and fly them out of his office which overlooked St. Petersburg.
That's not so unusual, except he made the paper airplanes out of money, and the crowds below began brawling for the banknotes:
Link (Photo: Facebookru.com)Bored with his never-ending dolce vita, 27-year-old millionaire Pavel Durov and his vice president spent their weekend making paper planes out of 5,000-rouble notes (around $160) and sending them into the St. Petersburg crowd – right from the window of the social net’s central office.
The colleagues reportedly took great joy watching the crowd’s reaction. Stunned at first, people quickly realized what was happening and got caught up in a big street brawl – fighting for the notes.
“People turned into dogs as they were literally attacking the notes,” one of the witnesses wrote. “They broke each other’s noses, climbed the traffic lights with their prey – just like monkeys. Shame on Durov!”
Meanwhile, those who triggered the fight were laughing and filming the events. All in all, the young men sent down about $2,000. Later Durov explained that all they wanted was to create “a festive atmosphere” in the city – that weekend, St. Petersburg was marking City Day.
I haven't lived in my home town since 87 and often wonder what happened to Adam as an adult. So I looked him up via the interwebs. Turns out he's a local politician.