For the shear fun of it

The curly locks of 17-year-old student Simon Mallia may soon be standing on end in fear, as more than 8,500 people have so far ganged up to see them being chopped off.

A group on the social networking site Facebook called "Simon Mallia must shave his hair if 10,000 people join this group" has so far reached over 8,500 members - all within less than two weeks of its creation.

The group, whose aim is cheekily listed as "gardening", was started during one of those inspiring activities - pure mathematics private lessons - where Luke Gauci and Darren Buttigieg, friends of Mr Mallia, conspired to create a group where if 500 people joined, Mr Mallia would have to shave his hair.

"Simon was too in love with his hair to accept, so we finally managed to find a compromise at 10,000 people," Mr Buttigieg mischievously recounts.

By the end of the lesson, they had a contract drafted which stated:

"I hereby agree to cut my hair to an average length of around 1 to 2 mm upon the accomplishment of the target that 10,000 people join the group created on the social networking site Facebook titled 'Simon Mallia must shave his hair if 10,000 people join this group'. This feat of shaving the hair must be fulfilled within one week of the accomplishment of the above-mentioned target." Mr Mallia signed, with five of his friends as witnesses.

It seems that Mr Mallia grossly underestimated the power of social networking and the hard work of his mates, because within 24 hours of the group's inception it had already shot to over 1,000 members, with people forwarding it to all their friends, regardless of whether they knew Mr Mallia or not.

The group, at http://tinyurl.com/locks-off , now numbers 8,504 members from Malta and abroad, which makes it one of the largest locally based groups on the popular social networking website.

Malta-based groups which are larger include "Can we get all Malta in one Facebook group?" at 17,326 members and "Can we find 30,000 Maltese Facebook users?" at 9,551 members.

When contacted for comment, all Mr Mallia had to say was "I would never have expected this."