BACK in 2012, a small Dutch town was turned upside down when a teenager made a simple mistake on social media.
A sweet sixteen party got so out of hand that a harmless gathering became a full-blown riot, like Hollywood movie Project X, which came out a couple of months earlier — and may have inspired the unruly revellers.
AlamyA private party invite in the Netherlands went viral, leading to chaos[/caption]
AlamyThings quickly got out of hand[/caption]
What is the Real Project X on Netflix about?
In 2012, a teenage girl wanted to invite some friends to her sixteenth birthday party in her hometown of Haren, Groningen, Netherlands.
She created an event on Facebook, intending for it to be a private gathering.
However, she accidentally set the invitation to public, meaning anyone could see it and RSVP.
What happened next was completely unexpected and soon became a cautionary tale about the power and unpredictability of social media.
Like in the Hollywood movie Project X — released just months earlier, depicting a wild, out-of-control high school party — Dutch teenagers began to share and spread the Facebook event.
In the film, the party quickly spirals into chaos, with hundreds of people showing up, leading to excessive drinking, drug use, property destruction, violence and a full-scale police intervention.
It ends with the main characters facing serious consequences, including legal trouble and financial ruin due to the damages caused.
Project X was reportedly loosely inspired by a real-life event in 2008 in Melbourne, Australia, where a teenager threw a massive party while his parents were away.
He promoted it on social media and over 500 people attended, resulting in property damage and police involvement.
Back in Haren in 2012, the Facebook invite for the birthday party quickly went viral, with thousands of people RSVPing.
Despite being warned about the potential scale of the gathering, local authorities underestimated how big the event would become and failed to prepare adequate security or crowd control measures.
When the day of the party arrived, a massive crowd descended on the small town.
AlamyA massive crowd turned up at the supposedly private party[/caption]
The situation rapidly escalated from a harmless gathering to a full-blown riot.
There was widespread disorder, vandalism, looting and clashes with police.
The town of Haren suffered major property damage and the event made headlines across the Netherlands and beyond.
Trainwreck: The Real Project X
An episode of Netflix’s Trainwrecked documents this extraordinary sequence of events.
Using interviews, archival footage and social media posts, it pieces together how a simple Facebook mistake led to total chaos.
It also examines the role of the Project X movie in inspiring teens to attend the party — blurring the line between fiction and reality.
Episodes of Trainwreck started dropping on Netflix on June 10, 2025, with The Real Project X available for streaming from July 8.
Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
