This is a great little Internet story. A Facebook group called, “Everybody write “THIS IS SPARTA!” on your AP and school essays,” with more than 33,000 members had official AP-test graders chuckling when the phrase showed up over, and over, and over again:
Test takers strike back. A funny thing happened at the annual mass grading of Advanced Placement English literature exams. The exclamation “This Is Sparta!” popped up daily in exam booklets.At first I ignored it, but then a reader who teaches at the University of California at Irvine asked that our table keep track of the numbers, and I knew there was something to this phenomenon.Lynda knew about the Facebook group, numbering more than 30,000, called “Everyone write ‘This is Sparta!’ on your AP tests.” Since we were reading nearly a million English Literature essays, “This is Sparta!” didn’t occur often, but all AP readers came to recognize it as the tag of a web-based network.Instructions on Facebook are explicit: “In the middle of an essay randomly write the words THIS IS SPARTA! Draw a single line through what you just wrote.” Kevin, who started the group, knew AP graders are instructed not to count anything crossed out.
It’s a refreshing counter to the more obnoxious Internet pranks out there, like the clever but annoying pool-crashing via Google Earth, which will undoubtedly show up on a Policing the ‘Net segment near you.
