I think 20-30-40 years from now, people will look at the early 21st century and discuss the insane amount of pranks, mostly media based, that now permeate society now. The grand master of this all is of course Stephen Colbert, but for sheer comedic delight there’s little better than Conan O’Brien’s HornyManatee.com.
At the end of the skit, in a line Mr. O’Brien insists was ad-libbed, he mentioned that the voyeur (actually Mark Pender, a member of the show’s band) was watching www.hornymanatee.com. There was only one problem: as of the taping of that show, which concluded at 6:30 p.m., no such site existed. Which presented an immediate quandary for NBC: If a viewer were somehow to acquire the license to use that Internet domain name, then put something inappropriate on the site, the network could potentially be held liable for appearing to promote it.In a pre-emptive strike inspired as much by the regulations of the Federal Communications Commission as by the laws of comedy, NBC bought the license to hornymanatee.com, for $159, after the taping of the Dec. 4 show but before it was broadcast.
By yesterday afternoon hornymanatee.com — created by Mr. O’Brien’s staff and featuring images of such supposedly forbidden acts as “Manatee-on-Manatee” sex (again using characters in costumes) — had received approximately 3 million hits, according to NBC. Meanwhile several thousand of Mr. O’Brien’s viewers have also responded to his subsequent on-air pleas that they submit artwork and other material inspired by the aquatic mammals, and the romantic and sexual shenanigans they imagine, to the e-mail address conan@hornymanatee.com.
I love America.
What sort of “license” to a website costs $159? Is this where my tax dollars go?
Well I’m not sure that “prank” is exactly the right word. I would phrase it something like, “tangible comedic tie-in” (although that’s not very good either). Anyway, I agree in the sheer hilarity of that site.
And Jerry, I was thinking the same thing. I assume the 159 dollars is tied to the hosting space and bandwith needed to run a site promoted on network television, and not from the domain “license fees” as the article seems to imply.
It’s hard to know what the NY Times means … for one of our Nation’s Great Newspapers, they don’t have very good writing.
I *think* by “bought the license to hornymanatee.com, for $159″ they mean “registered the domain name” for some period of time.
Hard to tell. If only the Times would hire Professional Journalists and Professional Editors … oh. They do?
Journalism. Gotta love it.
With kind regards,
Dog, etc.
searching for home
They bought the domain for 10yrs. The NYT is too fancy to say it that simply and bluntly.
I hadn’t seen that. Well, now, that’s an eye opener.
It’s an interesting observation you make. Prank humor is anti-authoritarian in nature. If we really are seeing an upswing in that culturally, it might say a lot about these times.
Interesting.