Justin Kowalski of Indianapolis says he initially set up the group as a joke, never expecting more than 50 people to show any interest in it. But within a week of its inception, the group had garnered 150,000 members, and its small mention in the Indianapolis Star propelled its membership to as high as 600,000 just days later.
"I could not believe it", said Kowalski. "Here I was thinking no one but my friends would even notice the damn thing, when all of a sudden three quarters of a million people had liked the page. I soon realized I was probably going to have to follow through with my promise".
Kowalski's wife Molly is said to be furious at her husband, not least because she had always planned to name their son after her late father Eric, a man she held very dear.
"My father meant so much to me", she said. "This was supposed to be a way of carrying on his legacy. Now we have no choice but to name our son after a stupid comic book character".
Since receiving word that his fan page had broken the 1 million barrier, Kowalski has 'pleaded' with members to forget they ever joined the page and to let him call the baby something else.
"It's pretty hard to convince some of my most loyal followers", he said. "Perhaps they'll let me get away with using Spiderman as his middle name instead".
This is not the first time a Facebook user has tried to achieve such a feat: in 2007, a British man placed a bet that he could find 1 million people who would disapprove of 'I-Bet-I-Can-Find-1,000,000-People-Who' type fan pages, while one desperate woman's assertion that she could find 1 million men 'who'd like to screw her' backfired when even her boyfriend at the time refused to join the group.
Image credit: composite from creative commons.