Bonsai Kitten Chronicles: Internet Outrage & Our Battle for Truth in Cyberspace
Discover how a decades-old cat hoax unravels the tangled web of misinformation, AI, and the urgent need for digital literacy in today
Over twenty years ago, I was asked by an outraged group of Polish grade school students emotionally stoked by their teachers to translate into English a protest letter against a company marketing a cruel way to torture cats. Bonsai Kitten, the website they wanted to protest, provided instructions on how to raise a kitten in a jar, to mould the bones of the kitten into the shape of the jar as the cat grows in the same way as a bonsai plant. Made by Dr. Michael Wong Chang of MIT, the website generated an avalanche of protests and reports to animal rights organisations and various government authorities around the world. Outraged myself, I had to see this site before translating a single word.
The site was real, all right, but I immediately felt something was wrong. What struck me as odd, is that they listed all the complaints, threats, demands, and comments of all ilk in a special section of their website. It was rare to see such content on business websites before Web 2.0, also there were…
