Luther Blissett (pseudonym)

[1] The pseudonym first appeared in Bologna, Italy, in mid-1994, when a number of cultural activists began using it for staging a series of urban and media pranks and to experiment with new forms of authorship and identity.

For reasons that remain unknown, though according to one former member the decision was based purely on the perceived comic value of the name,[3] the pseudonym was borrowed from a real-life Luther Blissett, a notable association football player, who played for A.C. Milan, Watford F.C.

[4] In December 1999, the Italian activists who had launched the Luther Blissett Project in 1994 decided to discontinue usage of the name by committing symbolic ritual suicide, or seppuku.

While the folk heroes of the early-modern period and the nineteenth century served a variety of social and political purposes, the Luther Blissett Project (LBP) were able to utilize the media and communication strategies unavailable to their predecessors.

for all the words or expressions of high communicative impact I have coined in peripheral cafes, squares, street corners, and social centers that became powerful advertising jingles, without seeing a dime; for all the times my name and my personal data have been put at work inside stats, to adjust the demand, refine marketing strategies, increase the productivity of firms to which I could not be more indifferent; for all the advertising I continuously make by wearing branded t-shirts, backpacks, socks, jackets, bathing suits, towels, without my body being remunerated as a commercial billboard; for all of this and much more, the industry of the integrated spectacle owes me money!

[9]The novel Q was written by four Bologna-based members of the LBP (Roberto Bui, Giovanni Cattabriga, Federico Guglielmi and Luca Di Meo), as a final contribution to the project, and published in Italy in 1999.

So far, it has been translated into English (British and American), Spanish, German, Dutch, French, Portuguese (Brazilian), Danish, Polish, Greek, Czech, Russian, Turkish, Basque, Serbian and Korean.

The reasons the group chose the name remain unclear to mainstream journalists (e.g. the BBC suggested that Blissett, one of the first black footballers to play in Italy, may have been chosen to make a statement against right-wing extremists in the country).

On 30 June 2004 he appeared on the British television sports show Fantasy Football League - Euro 2004, broadcast on ITV, and joked about his own (alleged) involvement in the Luther Blissett Project.