The Internet is a Playground: David Thorne’s Book Released

He’s best known for a whimsical email exchange, offering to pay a $233 bill with a drawing of a spider. When that email was posted on his site in November 2008, traffic soared from several hundred visits a day to half a million, and the post became fodder for David Letterman’s show.

Though the spider email exchange may be real, it uses a stock photograph and a generic, untraceable name, Jane Gilles. But former colleagues from advertising agency Demasi Jones, whose real names and faces are used throughout Thorne’s website and new book, say they have been hounded by his fans, many of whom believe that every word is true — via redwolf.newsvine.com