Man-on-Manatee Action

If you're anything like me, you spend hours upon end thinking "gosh, the Internet sure is awesome. But WHY? WHY is the Internet so awesome?" then realize you've bought a bunch of T-shirts that are funny once or twice then not so much anymore.

Well, here's why the Internet is awesome this week:

A little over a week ago, Conan O'Brien ad-libbed a quick throwaway joke on 'Late Night,' referencing a fictional Webcam site called hornymanatee.com. From the New York Times:

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.

As of yesterday afternoon, the site had received over 3 million visits. If you go there now, you'll see photos of people posing in plush manatee costumes in a PG-rated mockery of low-rent Web porn.

Isn't it weird how thanks to online porn spam, everybody gets jokes like this? My mother thinks this is hilarious and I really, really doubt she'd have understood those references before 2004. God, I hope.

Hornymanatee.com also hosts a video from a recent 'Late Night' show of James Lipton reading fan-created poetry about aroused manatees, as well as fan-created horny manatee art.

I would like to reiterate that because this site is sponsored by NBC,all of its content is PG-rated, and  any problems it causes you are entirely your own. You may not want to view the site with children just to avoid a potentially weird conversation, but it's fine, I swear.

To recap: As a result of one ad-libbed, throwaway joke on late-night television, an online phenomenon has been created that's warped back into a lot more jokes and interactive fun between 'Late Night's staff and its audience. This is the cultural equivalent of a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan and triggering a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean.

It's weird and insane and impossible to predict ... and in a couple weeks the whole thing will be over and a new meme will take its place.

If anything, this is a major example to TV studios that the Web is a viable medium. 3 million visitors in a week is stunning traffic to just fall into bass-ackwards -- that's some pretty awesome ad revenue there.

What if TV studios started partnering with people who created and promoted Web content based on their shows, instead of just suing them blind? They'd make a lot more money, amateur content creators would make a couple bucks for their efforts, and the world of entertainment would get a hell of a lot more interesting. This could be the first step.