As I mentioned sometime before in my earlier posts titled “Pathetically funny – SaveToby.com” and “The ever changing world of hype – part 1 — Practical Observations“, the SaveToby is a website that says that users who visit the website should pay the site in order to keep the owners of the site from “eating” Toby, a rabbit. According to Snopes, the site “SaveToby” is a hoax. That site also shows how SaveToby site used to have a disclaimer to say that the site was [and is] just a joke and not real.

I checked around June 30th to see what happens to our dear rabbit, while not checking during those times about the condition of dying human beings around the globe, and found out another joke on the site. Another proof that the joke, which the site owners have tried to show as being real, is turning into an illegal marathon is that the original date for the site, when Toby was supposed to be a meal, was June 30th. Now, the deadline has been extended to November of 2006. Since the site owners were blocked and banned by sites like Paypal from accepting donations for their plans, the site owners now have thought of a new way to make money; sell books. Their books will now be sold via Amazon.com . It will be interesting to see if Amazon does anything about it. The publisher of the book is Citadel Press, which has categorized the book under “Humor” at Amazon.

For the authors, having the book labeled as humor is a good way to make it past many obstacles, including the publishers. However, the site itself shows how it is going to manipulate users into buying the books, the same way that it manipulated hundreds of users into donating thousands of dollars to the owners of the site in order to supposedly “save” the rabbit. Considering the fact that the site has taken thousands of dollars from users in the form of solicitation for eating a rabbit when it’s not true can be considered an act of crime in this country, this whole scheme doesn’t sound funny overall when observed from the viewpoint of those who have donated or ordered merchandise from the site already.

Do not support the SaveToby website. The information above is just there to inform you about it; you should not buy anything or donate anything to the above site, as the site owners will keep taking money from innocent users by tricking them into thinking that they will eat the rabbit otherwise. The site would have been fine if it told the users that it is a joke or its sole intention is to make money using such a story. Then, those who donate or buy through the site would be doing so by knowing that they are only supporting the joke and want to support such “humor” sites and concepts. However, lying about it and making it look like real to many users [for those who considered it to be real and still do....siiigh] should result in an Anti-SaveToby website.

You can also inform Amazon.com or “Citadel Press” about the book and the purpose behind it if you wish, though I am sure the publishers have already been made aware of this issue by the authors. You can also do a search on Google to see which countries allow eating rabbits, snakes and other animals that we consider to be pets in the U.S., and plan to send SabeToby owners to those countries to try their hand at this exact business over there.