Sunday, March 20, 2005

"What some people will do"

A friend tells me that he likes that I held back from swearing on this blog, in respect to him I've toned down this post because he made a good point, however I think the odd expletive is justified here, read on fellow bored blogger.
Once again I feel the need to talk about a site and not link to it. In fact I’m not even going to bother naming it. Denying it of the patronage of the few people who actually look at my blog is petty and a pretty poor act of defiance but as the site I want to write about is run by a scumbag of the highest order I don’t really want to give the guy even the smallest amount of publicity.
So what ‘s site about? I stumbled upon it earlier today after seeing it linked on a blog I occasionally visit. It goes like this; there’s a guy who’s set up a site which displays a domestic rabbit he found, instead of finding the owner he decided to love and care for it up until a set date when he will have it killed and eat it unless he receives $50,000.
Let that sink in a second.....
He’s already received about $18,000 and a fair amount of hate mail. Has the money come from sensitive, gullible, and yeah, maybe even stupid, folk desperate to not see a bunny die? I suppose so. But it seems that a lot of people think this guys like rilley funny dude. He’s sooo clever, it’s genius, do you see what he’s doing? Preying on stupid people by using a bunny to extort money from them, ha, they’re probably meat eaters dude! Wankers. Apparently this isn’t the first time someone’s done this, it’s just the first time someone's done it with any degree of professionalism.
I don’t want to run through why I find this morally repugnant, I’d honestly like to believe that it doesn’t need explaining any further than profiting of the death of a living creature in any way is just fucking wrong. What bothers me is that the site that this idiot bought his domain name and uses to host from is happy to do so. They claim that as there’s nothing illegal (and this does seem to be the case) they don’t want to take away the wankers freedom of speech, they don’t want to censor him because they’re just one big happy corporation of freedom loving upstanding noncensoring wankers. If idiot who uses their service was spreading racist propaganda they would take it down they say, but he isn’t, so they won’t. Anyway, argues one of the owners of the band hosting thing site, the guys not serious, he won’t kill the rabbit, he won’t get any money from his merchandise (that’s right, you can buy merchandise, it all goes to help save the rabbit), why would he eat his cash cow, or rather, rabbit? He wouldn’t do it no matter how much money he got, so don’t don’t worry about it you humourless fools. And this is the argument that really bugs me. There’s no way of knowing this guy is just fooling us but if we say he is then we aren’t guilty of helping him, our hands are clean, phew! Of course it’s expecting a bit much to believe that a company will have some basic human fucking decency, would put morals before money especially when it wouldn’t create the same kind of dangerous publicity supporting a racist site would generate. The hosting site is losing the odd customer but it’s gaining some for it’s oh so healthy non-censoring stance. No one is questioning the fact that they take this stance, as do the idiots who think the guys so terribly funny, simply to removing themselves from any complicity with a man willing to kill a pet for money.
To every smug Nathan Barley type idiot that believes this is some seriously funny shit that messes with people’s head I hope that you die as soon as possible. To the arsehole who set up the site I want you to die a little slower, I’m only sorry that if you ever saw this site you’d actually like that you got this reaction.

2 comments:

Danny said...

Hey... Swear all you like about this guy. The word I'm thinking of rhymes with 'front'... actually 'clucking front'.

Thing is, I can't actually see any other point to this scam, other than making the author, who seems to have copped the idea from elsewhere, playing on some people's love of animals to make some money.

Cynical, morally bankrupt...

But that's OK for some people, because it's only an animal... There is obviously a whole philosphical / ethical debate around the relative status of animals and humans that I don't want to hog space on your blog for... (I'm guessing we'd largely agree on that, anyway, so it seems like preaching to the converted)...

Anyway, my two cents.

And to be honest 'Give me X(some money/ buy my record etc) or Y(puppy/ kitten / rabbit) gets it' is a tired gag I last saw on an ad for a Victor Lewis Smith CD back in the early 90's

(BTW Didn't mean to sound censorious or anything about the curse words. I just dug that you had a credo and tried to stick with it.)

paulhd said...

It okay, I know what you're saying about the swearing. The thing is that I swear in real life and I want my blog to be a more honest representation of me so I'll probably swear in it now. On the other hand I think writing's different to talking in that you can hopefully construct something that has the same impact as a swear word but has possibly more impact due to the restraint. In other words I'll only use the odd swear word.
Figured we'd be in agreement about the money/rabbit thing, it's cynical and pathetic. One thing I didn't mention is the laziness of it. As an idea it's not terribly clever and wanting money for nothing really bugs me, I hate that 'the world owes me' attitude.