xkcd

by **Levi** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:00 am UTC

http://www.peta.org/sea_kittens/

Oddly, 'fishing' is still called 'fishing.' Why not 'Sea kittening'?

Normally, I would be completely opposed to renaming entire biological groups, but the puns/awesome-sounding-names-for-things available would be pretty nifty. However, I propose that the official name for cats be 'land fish.' "Here, land fishy, land fishy!' That would be awesome. Imagine the possibilities: Sea kittens and chips! Nuclear sea kittenion! Binary sea kittenion! Deep sea kittening! I could go on a safari and see wild land fish roaming the savanna. Boblandfish would plague campers. This is too much to resist. I now actually agree with PETA on one thing. But other than the name, all of the other stuff on the website is crappy.

by **Bluggo** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:18 am UTC

Damn it, PETA, stop making ecologists look stupid.

Overfishing is a serious issue, but you are not helping people get convinced about that by pulling up moronic stunts like this.

Also, props for the "fish are as cute as kittens, so we should not kill them" line of argumentation - because, you know, that is totally the right way to approach the problem[/sarcasm]

by **sje46** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:20 am UTC

Something seems sea kitteny here . . . .

by **Woofsie** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:24 am UTC

I am constantly amazed by how braindead PETA can be. >.>

by **sje46** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:27 am UTC

I request a word filter to change "fish" to sea kitten.

I did not know that sea kittens liked to be petted! That is awesome

by **Amnesiasoft** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:28 am UTC

sje46 wrote:Something seems sea kitteny here . . . .

That's what I thought at first. It just sounded too ridiculous. But no, nothing is beyond PETA. It's on their website. That is, assuming peta.org is PETA's website and not somebody playing an insane joke on the internet.

by **MikeBabaguh** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:38 am UTC

I'm not a vegetarian, but I might be more sympathetic to their cause if they weren't all batshit insane. Now, PETA, kindly shut the hell up and continue your ad campaign of photographing hot famous women naked.

by **Woofsie** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 9:04 am UTC

Please, PETA does not represent vegetarians/vegans. Most of us think they're batshit insane too.

by **sje46** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 9:17 am UTC

My friend is a vegan who is big on animal rights activism. She likes peta.
I don't know. I am not a vegetarian or anything. Fishing doesn't bother me, and neither do slaughterhouses, but I'm not sure if they should.
Peta isn't crazy, just extreme. I'm sure some are as passionate about the rights of animals as most people are about how wrong the Holocaust was . . .. and some may do anything to show how outraged they are. "Some" being the key word.
What this is is a consciousness raiser, of course, like feminists calling it "herstory" instead of "history". Of course they know that the suggestion is ridiculous; all they are trying to do is make us think about these issues.
What we should be discussing here is not how crazy Peta is, but how effective this strategy will be.

by **Hawknc** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 9:44 am UTC

I think the fact that we're discussing how crazy PETA is instead of their actual message is pretty indicative of how effective it is. They lost any connection with the average person long ago.

by **Woofsie** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 10:03 am UTC

Yeah, I mean I do a lot of animal rights campaigning, and if I was talking to someone about fishing and I referred to it as "murdering sea kittens" what kind of response do you think I'd get? I don't know what PETA hope to achieve with this, but it looks like it will make people take them less seriously, not more.

by **CrunchyFoodstuff** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 10:12 am UTC

Why would People Eating Tasty Animals advocate eating cats? :twisted:

by **zekone** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 10:50 am UTC

Those "Sea Kitten Stories" are actually pretty horrific. In one, a tuna is "looking forward to the end". In the next, a human child suddenly gets really stupid because he ate a clever trout (yar, for real...). Although there's a picture later on of a "Land Kitten Souffle" which is kinda funny.

by **Maurog** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 1:50 pm UTC

So, should catfish now be called landfishseakittens?

by **Princess Marzipan** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 2:21 pm UTC

Maurog wrote:So, should catfish now be called landfishseakittens?

Fuck yes.

by **Nifar** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 2:24 pm UTC

See, shit like this is why I gave up on defending PETA years ago.

If anyone from PETA is reading: Yes, I know you're all nice people4, and do this for a good cause, but really, sea kittens? Thats just stupid. Besides, sushi tastes good...

by **felltir** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 3:38 pm UTC

Nifar wrote:Besides, sushi tastes good...

So does human flesh.

by **Sarr** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 3:46 pm UTC

Felltir wrote:
Nifar wrote:Besides, sushi tastes good...
So does human flesh.

You would know.

by **felltir** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 3:47 pm UTC

Sarr wrote:
Felltir wrote:
Nifar wrote:Besides, sushi tastes good...
So does human flesh.
You would know.

Yes. Yes I would.

by **Amnesiasoft** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 4:17 pm UTC

Felltir wrote:So does human flesh.

Hey, don't look at me. I have no moral objections to eating humans. Most of society does though.

by **d33p** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 4:58 pm UTC

Maurog wrote:So, should catfish now be called landfishseakittens?

This is quite possibly the best idea I have heard all week. Fullawin.

by **cwoodin** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:10 pm UTC

Levi wrote:However, I propose that the official name for cats be 'land fish.' "Here, land fishy, land fishy!' That would be awesome.

Sorry, I read through the stories and it looks like the sea kittens just call them land kittens.

by **Mercurius** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:20 pm UTC

PETA are awesome trolls.

Absolutely terrible animal rights activists, but brilliant trolls. When I first heard this story, I nearly spat coffee on my laptop, I was laughing so much.

by **sje46** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 7:14 pm UTC

d33p wrote:
Maurog wrote:So, should catfish now be called landfishseakittens?

This is quite possibly the best idea I have heard all week. Fullawin.

I believe it would be "landkittenseakitten"

by **Montrose** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 7:45 pm UTC

SIlly PETA, sea kittens already exist.

The Japanese word for seagull is 海猫 (umineko), which means, you guessed it, "sea cat."

Think of the trouble this would cause the Japanese: "Sea cats survive mostly by eating shellfish and sea kittens."

Is PETA trying to claim that gulls are evil cannibals? That's what it seems like to me.

by **'; DROP DATABASE;--** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 9:00 pm UTC

This is the funniest thing I've read all week. Yeah, fish totally resemble kittens. Wouldn't you just love to hug and pet one?

by **wst** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 9:50 pm UTC

Nifar wrote:If anyone from PETA is reading: Yes, I know you're all nice people, and do this for a good cause, but really, sea kittens? Thats just stupid. Besides, fish tastes good...

I don't know where I'd be without my tuna steaks, fried on one side, raw on the other, yummy in between.

by **fishyfish777** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 12:30 am UTC

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Sea_Kittens

In this issue, encyclopedia dramatica directly issues what sea kittens are.

I thought they were a type of fish until I read the article.

by **Jjarro** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 1:16 am UTC

I agree that actual kittens should be re-termed "land-fish" in light of PETA's unilateral moniker adjustment. Further, large cats should be called not "land-fish" but, yes, "land-sharks."

That way I can play with my domesticated land-fish while fearing for my life in the face of the land-shark threat.

What idiots.

by **EmptySet** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 1:58 am UTC

So, if we're calling fish "sea kittens" and kittens "land fish", are dolphins "sea fish", since they're mammals?

by **aleflamedyud** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 2:10 am UTC

As long as we're renaming things, when do we get to call PETA the National Association for Animal Nannying?

by **EmptySet** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 2:22 am UTC

Oh, oh, even better. Since regular fish are sea kittens, are sharks sea lions? If so, what are we calling actual sea lions?

by **Nifar** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 2:32 am UTC

Felltir wrote:
Nifar wrote:Besides, sushi tastes good...

So does human flesh.

So I've heard. However, consumption of human flesh has little to nothing to do with overfishing. Consumption of sushi, on the other hand, does have a mild relation to the topic.

by **d33p** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 2:41 am UTC

EmptySet wrote:Oh, oh, even better. Since regular fish are sea kittens, are sharks sea lions? If so, what are we calling actual sea lions?

Obviously, given their cuddly and slow-moving behaviour, they are watersloths.

by **roc314** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 2:49 am UTC

More important than all those other questions, what do we call humans now?

by **Tag** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 3:09 am UTC

I'm afraid that that website made me want to go and get fish and chips. Really it did.

Does that make me a bad person? (I even quite like kittens. I quite like some fish, for that matter.)

The stories are amazing in their surreality, though. I liked Tony the Trout, on whom the irony was not lost.

It seems pretty bizarre to decide that the best way to persuade people that a species shouldn't be eaten is to write stories with entirely untrue things in about them. They seem to have missed that people can tell fact from fiction - people have been telling cute stories about the Three Little Pigs for years, but mostly haven't stopped eating bacon - for that matter, cute kids' stories about fish aren't that rare (Finding Nemo is the obvious recent example). Telling stories about fish with degrees in neuroscience isn't really adding anything to the debate - none of the fish you might eat wear backpacks or have degrees, so whether you'd feel less willing to eat them if they did is pretty irrelevant. Telling people true things about how amazing real fish are might be a better idea.

Also, it's a pretty dishonest choice of name. 'Kitten' is only the name of the juvenile of the species, so trying to equate an entire class of animals to the juvenile of one species is dubious at best.

by **greeneggsnoham** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 3:34 am UTC

I heard that PETA's first choice was to call them wetpussies, but the emai server kept filtering it out. It probably wouldn't stop people wanting to eat them though.

by **AKAnotu** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 3:43 am UTC

d33p wrote:
EmptySet wrote:Oh, oh, even better. Since regular fish are sea kittens, are sharks sea lions? If so, what are we calling actual sea lions?

Obviously, given their cuddly and slow-moving behaviour, they are watersloths.

Actually, because a lion would now be a land shark, a sea lion is now a sea land shark.

by **d33p** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 3:47 am UTC

Too meta-. Neologism must prevail here. I'm still laughing about the "landfishseakitten" thing.

by **zekone** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 4:21 am UTC

Does this mean we have to swap the names "cattery" and "fishery" now too , or do we go to the "cattery to get a fish" and the "fishery to get a cat"?

EDIT: Silly space bar.

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