Sorry Everyone, That Splendour Line-Up Poster Doing The Rounds Is Fake

It’s become something of a tradition by now: each year, like clockwork, some joker mocks up a fake Splendour In The Grass line-up and briefly soaks in all the attention that such a prank garners.

Increasingly, these line-ups are pretty sharp. Gone are the days when pranksters would put obvious spelling mistakes in their line-ups — these days, you have to sniff out a fake by consulting a laundry list of other festivals and tour dates, keeping your eyes peeled for clashes.

Or, I mean, that’s usually how you have to debunk a fake line-up. It’s not what you have to do in the case of this atrocious fakie that’s been making its way around Facebook recently. I mean, just feast your eyes on the thing for two seconds, and then we’ll talk:

At the very least, props should go to the forger for copy and pasting the Splendour In The Grass header from the actual SITG website. Fewer props should go to that absolutely bonkers font used for the date — it literally looks like its been written in via the spray tool on Microsoft Paint.

Then there’s all the mistakes.

For a start, Bon Iver is playing Dark Mofo and a string of Australian dates this June. It would be bizarre for the man to take a full tour around Australia, only to return a few weeks later for another Australian festival, having literally just played one. No touring company in the world would encourage such a move, which would be destined to lose money.

Same goes for Rex Orange County. He’s down for a full Australian tour this June — he’s not coming back for a while, let alone weeks after.

Then there’s the baffling inclusion of Troy Ave, listed above Vance Joy, Gang of Youths and Dune Rats, some of the biggest acts in Australia. Troy Ave has played a mere 17 shows over the last five years. He is not playing Splendour. And if he was, he definitely wouldn’t be that high on the bill. Internet prankster, I respect you for clearly being a Troy Ave fan who wanted to will something into existence, but you are letting your biases disrupt your forgery work.

Add to that the baffling decision to include Wil Wagner, a musician that has very pointedly not been in the mainstream for the past year or so, a misspelling of What So Not, and just the words ‘Steeevemadden’ in the bottom corner down there. Maybe Steeevemadden is a band and I am just out of touch. But I’ve googled that name every which way I can think of, and all that comes up is a Jonah Hill meme, making me think the prankster is just having a laugh.

Which is disappointing. I have come to expect more from Splendour forgeries. Still waiting with baited breath for the day someone makes a fakie that is totally error free.