Bonsai Kitten

2000

Date: April 2000 · Place: bonsaikitten.com, MIT student server · Figures: Dr. Michael Wong Chang (pseudonym), MIT graduate student · Tags: Hoax, Outrage 01. A Site About Growing Cats in Jars An MIT student under the pseudonym Dr. Michael Wong Chang launches bonsaikitten.com in late 1999, going viral in April 2000. The site claims to sell kittens raised inside glass containers so their bones grow into decorative shapes. Diagrams, FAQs, testimonials, ordering instructions: all fake. It is satire pitched directly at credulous email-forwarders. The site contains no actual kittens and no actual jars. It is a Photoshop and a tone. 02. The FBI Investigates a Joke PETA mobilises. The Humane Society writes letters. The FBI opens an investigation, twice. MIT's servers receive enough abuse traffic that they ask the student to move the site. He moves it. The investigation finds, predictably, no kittens. Bonsai Kitten establishes the template for the rest of the decade: an obviously fake outrage object that mainstream institutions take literally, then a wave of forum users laughing at the institutions. The joke is the response, not the site. Sources • Snopes, 'Bonsai Kitten' (2001) • Wired, 'Kitten-in-a-jar hoax' (2001) • KnowYourMeme, Bonsai Kitten