The internet is musing about whether street artist Banksy just trolled everyone currently trying to buy a ticket to his surprise opening of a new "bemusement park" called Dismaland.
Basically, he got everyone to frantically go online at 11.00 a.m. to prebook a ticket for £3 to see his satirical take on Disney's theme parks, which features new work from the artist as well as other big names like Damien Hirst, only to make it impossible to buy tickets.
On the supposed online ticket portal, tickets supposedly went on sale at 11.00 a.m. BST. The site says:
Choose a daytime or evening session.
Buy a timed ticket here and you'll receive a secure online ticket you can either print out or take to the door on a mobile device.
The website looks like this:
Dismaland.com
At first, it looks like the calendar is unclickable because the site is continually crashing due to the web traffic.
However, on closer inspection you notice the calendar is just a JPEG file, which renders the site useless for buying tickets. For example, when a website doesn't fully properly reload, its format reverts to something like this (see the difference above:
Dismaland.com
The only formatting that stays the same are JPEGs - pictures - which incidentally shows the calendar is a picture:
Dismaland.com
And guess what? - when you look at the webpage's source code - the coding behind what makes a website run and display text, images, and audio - it confirms that the calendar is a JPEG:
Dismaland.com
After reports surfaced that tickets were in fact meant to go on sale at 12.00 p.m., the website became somewhat more accessible. But the little upside-down basket icon, which you would think leads to a page to buy tickets, just loops you back to the homepage.
People on Twitter started to muse about whether there could be deeper meaning to the webpage:
You cannot actually buy tickets for #Dismaland - the disappointment of the website not working adds to the all round dismal experience.
- WE ARE Spectacular (@WEARESpectaculr) August 21, 2015The shopping cart is upside down meaning you'll never fill it. #Dismaland
- WE ARE Spectacular (@WEARESpectaculr) August 21, 2015Banksy is really trolling me, impossible to get tickets #Dismaland
- Rachel Coombes (@rachelcoombesx) August 21, 2015