True or not?!

November 3, 2000 1:52 PM

True or not?! One of the weirdest things I've ever seen on the web. I was sure this was a hoax and kept digging for confirmation and never found it.
posted by norm (11 comments total)

Given the fact that a) this would violate many bioethics guidelines, and b) it would have been covered by now on news programs around the world, I'm skeptical. I'm even more skeptical when I find the link to Paperveins, a museum of "internet art", and Genochoice, which has an interesting disclaimer.

Or maybe I'm just spoiling your fun.
posted by dhartung at 2:01 PM on November 3, 2000

Hey, I never said I believed it, just that I couldn't find a confirmation it being a hoax. F'rinstance, with the Clone Jesus site a while back, it's pretty easy to tell it's a hoax if you go to the credits. Here I'm not so sure.
posted by norm at 2:11 PM on November 3, 2000

Hmm. Missing a "for" betwixt confirmation and it.
posted by norm at 2:12 PM on November 3, 2000

All I know is that isn't really a live EKG monitor on the homepage..


posted by schlomo at 2:50 PM on November 3, 2000

This was posted back in June -- ahh, my first Metafilter comments.
posted by snakey at 2:51 PM on November 3, 2000

From Paperveins - "His most recent project, MalePregnancy.com (with Artist Lee Mingwei), received a 1999 INVISION New Media Silver Medal and has generated hate mail from such diverse groups as a Christian conservatives in Wyoming to female transvestites in Tokyo. "

So unless the gestation period for male pregnancies runs over a year, this would tend confirm it as a hoax.
posted by y6y6y6 at 4:59 PM on November 3, 2000

Not so much a hoax as just some web performance art.

I found the disclaimer and the link to PaperVeins pretty easily (without reading these comments first), so the OP must not have tried very hard to disprove it to himself.
posted by briank at 5:45 PM on November 3, 2000

actually reading the site closely might have helped. like the credits page, where you'll find a link to GenoChoice Laboratories, who, by making use of some cheesy Flash, claim to enable one to design his/her (as well as his/his, her/her) own offspring. online. by putting your thumb on the monitor.
posted by quonsar at 5:53 PM on November 3, 2000

A general rule of thumb I live by nowadays: If you find yourself questioning whether or not something is real, assume it is not real until you are irrefutably proven otherwise. This doesn't work for any religions by the way, so unless you want to become an aetheist, don't use this rule of thumb on any belief system within which you are already entrenched.

This is fun. Try this: Live your life for an entire year assuming everything you read or hear or experience or see on tv or whatever is REAL. Just accept everything inputted to your brain as a given fact. This is a fun mental exercise for those not interested in retaining sanity.

An alternative fun mental exercise is to realize that your senses are constantly "lying" to you. Infrared and ultraviolet are out there, yet our eyes cannot see them. Their rays reach the eyeball, but don't make it to the brain. Likewise, though the vibrations reach your ears, there are sounds lower and higher than required for us to hear. So our ability to acknowledge and comprehend external sensory input is inferior. We cannot trust anything we experience to be the truth.

Still with me? Didn't think so.
posted by ZachsMind at 3:17 AM on November 5, 2000

This doesn't work for any religions by the way

Yes it does!
posted by Mocata at 4:35 AM on November 6, 2000

Hmm. Am I real? How do i prove it? [cue philisophical droning that's been going on for years]
posted by davidgentle at 4:20 PM on November 6, 2000