Animal Cruelty

[Earth Walker]

This really steamed me up!

[B]BONSAI KITTENS

Bonsai Kitten is back online after being successfully shut down.
500 names are needed to shut this site down again.
If you would like your name added to the petition, please send
your name and city to: stringsuk@hotmail.com

Bonsai kittens are the latest "craze" to hit America and Asia.
They are real kittens.
When they are about 2 weeks old, they are injected with drugs
to decrease their muscle mass and put in a glass jar or other
small container.
They cannot move and are left like that, inside a small container,
while their growing body starts to take on the shape of the
"vessel" they are inhabiting.
Their anuses are sealed, and waste is carried away by a tube.
They are fed by a tube going into their heads.
They are sold for souviners.

What I read and saw is very disturbing
www.bonsaikitten.com

How about he gets put in a small container -- after all, his
boring, mundane shape needs changing.
S.O.B!http://www.jamezbrown.com/mysmilies/contrib/ruinkai/lightingzapA.gif

[Raevyn]

This one's actually a pretty clear hoax.


(How could you know this? Because the process described is impossible: Animals so treated would die long before they could be "molded." Because the web site offers no way to purchase the materials advertised. Because "Bonsai Kitten" displays no actual pictures of molded kittens.)

Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/bonsai.htm)
Cnet coverage (http://www.cnet.com/techtrends/0-7311128-8-7312643-1.html)
Google's extensive links (http://www.google.ca/search?q=bonsai+kitten+hoax&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&meta=)

[WynterWynd]

Thats still sick!:(

[SerenityMoon]

Raevyn, yes, they die. They die quickly, so i'm told...i'm not so sure it's a hoax...either way, that's so damn sickening...

[Raevyn]

The quote is from Snopes, SerenityMoon (just so that it's clear that snopes is the source). The FBI and Humane Society have already investigated (as reported by CNet on the link I provided) and are now looking into pressing charges for depicting animal cruelty.

[WynterWynd]

Good as long as they get nailed for something!!!:mad:

[fire_Raven]

whether it be a hoax or not, it still made tearas stream down my face as soon as i saw it... omg... thats sick, i'm still crying... who knows if its a hoax... may bast help those poor kittens...
and if it is true, its animal cruelty and they should be locked away for it, even if it is a twisted joke...

[earth_clover]

That crap makes me sick. Why hasn't anyone stopped that? It's blatent animal abuse. How could these people do that? I swear, I wonder how those people would feel if something like that happened to them or their children or something. Stupid something something somethings....

[Flaire-FireStar]

It's absolutely disgusting....even if it is a hoax, I'm still disturbed by the pictures shown on the site... Not only that, it would take a demented person to come up with such a disgusting idea in the first place. :meanface:

[Earth Walker]

Unfortunately, it is not a hoax......and there is a "sales"
button to click on....for those sick enough wanting to
buy his "art"

[Raevyn]

Mystique, the sales page is links to lists of "tools" and other things they pretend to use. The only time it even mentions sales is when it says "they don't usually sell to the public".

It *is* a hoax, it *has* been investigated by numerous organizations, and it's a big joke. If you read some of the links it'll even explain how it was created by a bunch of students who wanted to exploit people who believe the ridiculous claims


It's actually a bit of fictional humor put up just before the end of the year 2000 by some MIT grad students to satirize "the human belief of nature as commodity" and to "punish the hypocritical and easily offended by upsetting them, and to amuse those who understand."

Yes it's sick, yes it's in bad taste, but there are multitudes of people and organizations who have investigated it.


The "Bonsai Kitten" web site does a reflect a very dark, disturbing trend in our society, and it has nothing to do with animal abuse. It has to do with an ever-increasing sense of entitlement which proclaims that if you don't like what someone else has to say, the best and most proper way of handling your displeasure is to force the other person to shut up. Emotions are no longer a private affair; your outrage is meaningless unless it's expressed publicly. It's pointless for you to privately scorn or simply ignore speech you don't agree with. You have the right (and therefore the duty) to use any legal means available to quash that speech, in as public as fashion as possible (since your outrage isn't validated unless everyone else knows about it) -- even if that effort includes fabricating reasons why the other person's speech is "dangerous."

(quotes, again, taken from snopes)

[Raevyn]

Humane Society Investigation (http://www.hsus.org/ace/14130)
Wired - FBI Goes After Bonsaikitten.com (http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,41733,00.html)
Culture Jamming, Hoaxes, Bonsai Kittens, on Google (http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Activism/Media/Culture_Jamming/Hoaxes/Bonsai_Kittens/)

[WynterWynd]

http://h4ha.org/stopcruelty/


this is about the 'petition' needing 500 names:eek: its at the middle/bottom of the page

[Raevyn]

Wow, over 15,000 signatures on that one petition!

[Saphra]

That is the sickest thing I have heard in a long time and I would love to kill whoever started that.... I almost threw up my lunch when I read it....

[Old Witch]

I won't even go to that site. Hoax that it is, I hope the perpetrators of this thing feel the pain that a living organism would feel if it were true. So Mote it be..............

[WynterWynd]

I emailed that putz last night and all I got back was a reply thats says ..............


Cheers!

Dilinq, UK.

looks like his name is Harry Stevens, what a jerk!!:mad:

[SerenityMoon]

it doesn't surprise me that he wouldn't have something else to say to your email..i'm sure he gets them all the time, and he probably doesn't think yours was any more special than the rest..*shrug* you can email people like that all you want and never hear what you want to hear. it's a fact of life.

[SuperHeroGirl]

I'm pretty sure this is fake. I always see on those stupid "funny animal video" shows cats jumping into jars and stuff....

[WynterWynd]

of all the cats I have ever had, I have never seen one willingly get all the way into anything that small! Its World War Fur just getting them inot the carrier to got to the vet!:eek:

[Nissala]

Hoax or not it really makes me upset! I mean, even being a hoax, just think of the sick-o's out there who would ACTUALLY try doing it thinking it is REAL!! endangering any living beings life, even if joking, is pathetic.....

[shnen]

the link is broken now, so I guess it got shut down...
really doesn't surprise me though, the tings people will do for shock factor these days is truely disturbing... anyone ever watch a show called fear factor? yeah, well its usually highly entertaining, until they started making people eat stuff like monkey brains and horse rectum... :sick:

how they get away with that I will never know.

[Emaleth]

I read about it more than a year ago. It is a hoax. There was a time when I got a couple dozen of spams concerning bonsai kittens, it's really sick, but not surprising, as Shnenn said, some people would do anything to shock others.

[Marchosias]

Eh, I thought it was rather funny...the way they get those pics is to just let the kitten crawl into the jar, then they snap a pic of the end it is "stuck" in. No animal abuse...they were going for the same exact reactions you guys gave them.

[One Eyed]

Originally posted by Marchosias
Eh, I thought it was rather funny...the way they get those pics is to just let the kitten crawl into the jar, then they snap a pic of the end it is "stuck" in. No animal abuse...they were going for the same exact reactions you guys gave them.

yup! hehe
A girl in my last high school class did a whole project on it and it is fake.

For real stuff talk to anybody to who works with animals!
I adpoted a 2 year old German shepphard which was starrved, beaten and slept outside since being a pup - he fed himself on his own s**it*.

He is a great Dog since I got him!

[Yvonne Belisle]

By the way you can get the same look if you set a cat on the scanner. Then just use paintshop to move it into another picture.

[SimplyStrange]

That's a huge jar... My cat could fit in that...

And it might endanger the lives of cats if people actually think it's real... but those are the same kind of people who are going to imitate "Jackass" and stuff they see in movies and shoot other kids because GI Joe shoots people... there's just no stopping some people...

It's a joke, and probably joking around about how cruel humans are to animals anyway, like animal testing and the likes.