Web designer’s prank gets message to McCain campaign

Some supporters of presidential hopeful John McCain, R-Ariz., were caught off-guard last week when they visited his MySpace page and found the following announcement below his photo:

“Dear supporters. Today I announce I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage … particularly marriage between passionate females.”

That online message came down within a few minutes when McCain’s team saw it posted there. The man behind that prank, Seattle tech developer Mike Davidson, posted his own blog explanation last week, saying he decided it was a form of net payback.

Davidson, 32, is co-founder of the popular Seattle news site Newsvine. Over the past year he noticed numerous people grabbing his MySpace page design for their own pages.

“I’m not really anti-McCain,” Davidson said in an interview. His prank was a way for him to point out the sham of people trying to look hip on the Web without giving credit or understanding what they’re doing.

Davidson has been a Web designer for several years. Before starting NewsVine, he was a developer and manager for Disney Entertainment and ESPN.com.

Davidson said the McCain page linked directly to some images on Davidson’s own Web site, Mikeindustries.com. This wasn’t the first time that’s happened. The difference this time, he said, was that no one contacted him or even posted an acknowledgement on McCain’s MySpace page.

When he substituted the gay marriage statement instead of some earlier innocuous image, Davidson said it was “comic retribution for Web negligence.”

So far he’s found few people attacking him for what he did. “I decided to pick the topic of gay marriage because it was more neutral than something like abortion or the war.”

McCain’s MySpace page was launched last year and is considered one of a variety of Web resources the senator uses. “MySpace allows the senator to reach a valuable cross-section of people,” said campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds.

He said he couldn’t say what fallout — if any — the flap created.

After the bogus message was removed, McCain’s staff added a single line crediting Davidson as the template creator.

“I haven’t heard from anyone in the McCain group who were unhappy. I think they’re smart enough to take advantage of it and use it,” Davidson said.

“The intent on my part was not to cause any harm.”