Not 4 sale

The man behind State Snaps, a set of social media pages with over a million followers, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for getting his cousin to try to steal a domain name at gunpoint.

In what could easily pass as the trendiest Fargo storyline yet if only it had happened a bit further north, Iowan twentysomething Rossi Lorathio Adams II was so intent on acquiring the domain “doitforstate.com” from its stubborn owner that he tracked him down to his home.

This obviously all sounds a bit over the top. But we didn’t realise at first that Adams had been operating under the domain “doit4thestate.com”. We can imagine how, as his empire grew, so did his obsession with replacing that corny number four. How are you seriously meant to build a credible brand known for sharing clips of Iowa State University students rubbing their boobs and jiggling their butts with a domain that isn’t totally earnest?

And so Adams’s cousin was sent into the domain owner’s abode, gun in one hand and easy, step-by-step guide to moving a domain to another GoDaddy account in the other, to correct that undeniably gauche number four once and for all. Shots were fired, but unlike in Fargo, no one dies in this story. Unless you’re reading this in like 2030, when we refuse to delete this post at gunpoint.

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