Upon This Man's initial widespread exposure, there was suspicion from not only 4chan users but also blogs like ASSME and io9 that it was a guerilla marketing stunt, as they discovered ThisMan.org was hosted by the same company that also hosted a site named guerrigliamarketing.it,[10][6][11] "a fake advertising agency which designed subversive hoaxes and created weird art projects exploring pornography, politics, and advertising," described Natella.[12] Nonetheless, some sources presented the argument of it being a hoax as simply being one side of the discussion instead of a real fact.[5] However, a 2010 post from the "artgency" website Kook, which Natella became a partner of while This Man was gaining traction, and a published paper he wrote in 2012 titled "Viral 'K' Marketing" finally confirmed that This Man was not real but rather a stunt.[10][6]