Public Response & Legitimacy
The website received media attention throughout the United States and in other countries. Toby was also featured on NBC Nightly News
The website made many animal rights activists upset, claiming that the owners were engaging in animal cruelty. They attempted to have the site removed; however, the company that hosted the site, Go Daddy, claimed that there was nothing illegal about the site and that "it was perfectly legal to eat a rabbit". PayPal accounts used for donations were often frozen due to complaints about the site.
There have also been questions about whether or not the site was legitimate. The owners, when asked, claimed that the site was completely serious and they would eat the rabbit. However, the nature of the website suggests it is a hoax or joke, a retelling of older jokes that threaten harm to an animal unless you buy a product (for example, National Lampoon once ran a cover with a gun aimed at a puppy, stating "Buy this magazine, or the puppy dies"). The site itself never makes it clear that it is a joke; however, "funny" and "humor" are included in the site's search keywords.
There were other similar websites in existence around the same time that threatened to eat a rabbit unless a monetary demand was met. One, Save Bernd!, copied Save Toby. It demanded a 1,000,000 euro ransom. The site claims that "Bernd is gone", but not that he was eaten. Small letters at the bottom of the page make it clear that "It's a joke".
Read more about this topic: Save Toby
Famous quotes containing the words public, response and/or legitimacy:
“When Paul Bunyan’s loggers roofed an Oregon bunkhouse with shakes, fog was so thick that they shingled forty feet into space before discovering they had passed the last rafter.”
—State of Oregon, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“It’s given new meaning to me of the scientific term black hole.”
—Don Logan, U.S. businessman, president and chief executive of Time Inc. His response when asked how much his company had spent in the last year to develop Pathfinder, Time Inc.’S site on the World Wide Web. Quoted in New York Times, p. D7 (November 13, 1995)
“In New York—whose subway trains in particular have been “tattooed” with a brio and an energy to put our own rude practitioners to shame—not an inch of free space is spared except that of advertisements.... Even the most chronically dispossessed appear prepared to endorse the legitimacy of the “haves.””
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. “Cleaning and Cleansing,” Myths and Memories (1986)