[798] in peace2
Re: Hard to Belive-For a Reason
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Laura C. Dilley)
Fri May 18 10:54:43 2001
Message-Id: <200105181454.KAA23055@mint-square.mit.edu>
To: Daniel S Berger <danielb@MIT.EDU>
cc: Karen Sachs <karens@MIT.EDU>, peace-list@MIT.EDU
From: "Laura C. Dilley" <dilley@MIT.EDU>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 18 May 2001 10:35:25 EDT."
<200105181435.KAA07997@h006097228fb0.ne.mediaone.net>
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Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 10:54:39 -0400
Just to clarify some of the points about the "Bonsai Kittens" site made in
recent emails, yes it is a hoax, in the sense that the page was put up as a
sick joke. I am a member of MIT SETA (Students for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals) and we were emailed about the site several months ago. Apparently, it
was put together by an MIT student and the site was originally hosted by an
MIT server. Well, some animal protection groups found the page - and I don't
recommend going out of your way to take a look at the page, since it is really
an example of somebody's very very sick sense of humor - and it is so
"deadpan" (no pun intended) in its delivery that it could easily pass for a
site which was serious about catering to individuals who wished to pursue this
as a twisted hobby. (And not everyone knows how to identify that an image has
been manipulated in photoshop when it has been done carefully - the site sure
fooled me the first time I saw it.) Anyway, the site got reported to the MSPCA
who subsequently investigated it and found out that it was intended to be a
joke, and they contacted MIT about it. Thankfully MIT decided to no longer
host it and the student decided to host it from an outside site instead as a
way to take a stand on "freedom of speech". In short, it was intended to be a
hoax, and it is still up and people are linking to it all over the world, in
my opinion probably inspiring sadistic individuals to pursue new forms of
animal torture, but it is "free speech". I agree with Daniel that we shouldn't
waste our time, since I would rather not give it any further publicity.
Laura
> this site is a joke, as is obvious from visiting it. in fact, if you
> look closely at the site, it should become fairly obvious that the
> suggestions are not physically possible, the photographs are created
> by photoshop and other image manipulation programs, and there are no
> actual actaul kittens harmed in the making of the web site. the truly
> curious out ther mught try poking around a little bit to join the mit
> mailing lists which, for humor value, forward the complaints of people
> who take the site seriously. In short, the site is a hoax, and
> probably not worth getting too worked up over. There a are already
> more causes that desereve our time than time we have to give, so too
> much anger over a web page of a college student's image editing skills
> is probably not the place for us to waste effort.
>
> -daniel
