Add Comment Support the Museum of Hoaxes BUY MY BOOK — BUY SOME STUFF — or MAKE A DONATION Main Page

To Serve Rabbit Posted August 13, 2003: This has gotten a lot of attention recently. A LiveJournal user, Siamang, posted an entry about how his pet rabbit Grendel died. So (he claimed) he decided to skin and eat his beloved pet. After all, burying or cremating him seemed so impersonal. This was accompanied by pictures of Grendel both alive and served up on a plate. Predictably, the entry got a huge response. But it seems that Siamang wasn't being entirely honest. In a separate journal entry he refuses to say whether his story is true or false. He plays very coy, writing that online journals "can be fact or fiction and are almost always an extremely subjective hybrid of the two." In other words, the story probably isn't true. A lot of people have pointed out that what he claims is rabbit meat looks an awful lot like chicken.    Grendel before... and Grendel after Comments: most recent posts first Just a note - if he REALLY ate the rabbit the way to make it seem real would be to show him preparing it. I, personally, have eaten rabbit, and I know of a restaurant that lets you pick the rabbit you want to eat. Alive. I'm a vegetarian now so I think all forms of meat-eating barbaric but it certainly wouldn't bug me if I wasn't veggie. Ariel Saturday, September 20, 2003 at 11:39:47 Fake, of course. My rabbit died and I buried her in my girlfriend's backyard. I guess this is how I cope with grief. The 'this is so Philosophy 101' comments wouldn't annoy me as much if I had actually taken philosophy classes. I made the entry because I like testing the way that online journals can mix fact and fiction, and how it's up to the reader in a lot of cases. I'm planning on making more 'fiction presented as fact' entries in the future(like the one about masquerading as a homeless person), and wanted to gauge reactions. Siamang Wednesday, August 27, 2003 at 08:43:11 The way I read it, Siamang admits to the following things: That he wanted to eat his rabbit, but didn't because he was afraid of the health consequences. That he never ate his rabbit, but made up a story to shock people That he really did eat his rabbit because he knew its flesh wasn't diseased. Admitting to all these things simultaneously means that they cancel each other out. In reality, he's not admitting to anything. He says quite explicitly that his motivations for posting the entry were "whatever you think they were." Siamang is trying to make the philosophical point that readers determine their own truths. It's basically right out of Philosophy 101 and a little sophomoric because the argument only applies to inconsequential claims. For instance, if he had described something of consequence, such as murdering someone, he couldn't play all coy and postmodern. The police would want to know precisely what he had actually done. Alex Sunday, August 17, 2003 at 12:57 In your essay, you state that Siamang "refused to say whether his story is true or false". Apparently, you did not read his entire post. Siamang DOES state that he invented the story in an attempt to get negative responses. His plan seems to have worked. In the future, perhaps you should pay a bit more attention. Thank you. Sunday, August 17, 2003 at 10:48:26