Details magazines has a somewhat ridiculous story in its November issue about “Cougar Con,” a singles event that brought together young men and single women over 40, or “cougars,” a once slanderous term that has since become popular enough to inspire TV shows on cable networks and ABC.

The article points out that this event wasn’t at all a conference, but instead one of countless events for single people hosted by a man named Rich Grosse. Thing is these events never got any attention—until the organizer added the word “cougar” to the press release. I’ll let Details take it from here.

Rich Gosse has organized events for the Society of Single Professionals for 30 years. He ran for governor of California in 2003 on a "fairness for singles" platform. To promote this Friday-night matchmaking party in Palo Alto, he replaced "singles" and "mixer" with "cougar" and "convention" in the press release. For good measure, he threw in "first annual." Soon he was fielding calls from England and Finland. More than 40 members of the media phoned him too, including a correspondent from Al Gore's Current TV. "We've been doing parties with younger men and older women, and no one knew we existed," Gosse says. "We say 'cougar,' and now we have media from all over the world."

Like I said, a ridiculous story—about our ridiculous media.