Web page makes man cyberspace celebrity
Jenifer Hanrahan
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
November 22, 1999
Nobody should care that Mahir Cagri plays the accordion and wants women to
visit him in Turkey.
But thousands -- perhaps millions -- do, from San Diego to Instanbul.
What started as a personal Internet home page filled with broken English and
goofy family photos has sent Cagri orbiting into cyberspace stardom. He's
become the butt of an international joke and Turkey's most eligible bachelor,
hounded by reporters and inundated with thousands of e-mails.
Mahir-mania has spawned online fan clubs and animated spoofs, including one
page substituting photos of Clinton, another comparing Cagri's image with the
Shroud of Turin and others superimposing Cagri next to famous figures such as
David Letterman and Pamela Anderson Lee.
"He's become the Forrest Gump of the Internet," said Rick Jones, a Mahir
Cagri fan club member from Carlsbad.
Cagri is the latest instant celebrity -- from gossip-writer Matt Drudge to online pinup Cindy Margolis -- created by the culture of the global computer network.
"This is the first time I've seen a personal page go this far this fast," said Janelle Brown, a senior writer for Salon.com, who has been following the Mahir
phenomenon since it began unfolding a few weeks ago.
Cagri's story goes like this: About a year ago, he posted a personal Web page.
"Welcome to my Homepage!!!!!!!!! I kiss you!!!!!" it began.
He described himself as a "jurnalist" who likes "sport, swiming, basketball, tenis, volayball, walk . . . " The site included photos of Cagri playing the accordion and lying on the beach in a skimpy, European-style swimsuit. He wanted to "invitate" women to his home.
Something about Cagri's combination of corniness and guilelessness, his
misspellings and prominent nose, tickled the global funny bone.
On Nov. 4, Cagri woke to find himself with the leading role in a full-fledged
Web craze -- dwarfing even the Hampster Dance and the dancing baby -- as
the link to his page was sent via e-mail around the world.
No one was more shocked than Cagri. He offered an explanation on-line:
Someone in Turkey swiped the page, tinkered with the quotes and added
embarrassing proclamations like: "I like sex."
On Oct. 26. when Salon.com's Brown first saw Cagri's page, the online counter
registered 11,000 hits. Within 24 hours, it read 100,000. A few days later --
more than 1 million.
Turkish dailies put him on their front pages, and publications from around the
world followed.
Cagri's Internet update made him all the more lovable. He urged people to think
about ways to solve war and poverty. "I'm too happy that I made lots of people
laugh and for a minute I could take them away from their private problems," he
wrote. "Everything is for peace, friendship, humanity and love. As a world's
citizen, I love all of you. And thank all of you."
On Friday, the counter read a staggering 2.1 million hits. Women offered to
come visit him. Office workers, holding signs that said, "We kiss you too!!!,"
sent Cagri group shots. (In Turkish, "I kiss you" is a common farewell, like
Ciao.)
There's even a Mahir song on MP3.com.
"Mahir has been made fun of. He's been spoofed. He's been made to dance
and yet he has a sense of humor about it," said Jones, who has posted his own
Mahir Web site and has linked it to the Red Cross' earthquake relief efforts in
Turkey. "He rose above it and said all people should be brothers and sisters.
The heart is there. That's what touched me." Others seized the opportunity to
make a profit. Shizuka Nakane of Vancouver, British Columbia, posted a Mahir
parody site that included a banner ad for an online casino. She gets a cut of the money bet by people who enter the advertiser's site through hers.
"At first it was hilarious, but now I feel sort of bad for him," Nakane said. "This guy did absolutely nothing but build a personal home page, and somebody stole it and made him look like a fool."
So far, the Turkish-American community is chuckling along with everyone else,
said Osman Tat, assistant director for public education for the Assembly of
Turkish American Associations in Washington, D.C.
That is, unless they find out the prankster who stole Cagri's Web site is a
mean-spirited Greek mocking Turks. "If it's a joke, we'll take it as a joke," Tat said. "But I am suspicious, and we are investigating."
Don't feel too sorry for the man behind the hoopla just yet. Mahir is clearly
having fun with all of the attention. Not only has he promised to post an update in a few days, he hasn't even bothered to take down his phone number.
© Copyright 1999 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
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