Back when we were trying to come up with domains for reddit, we were running searches on an expired domain site. The name escapes me now, but it seemed like a good place to find a domain, since all of them had at one point -- presumably -- been selected by a human being.
We knew the site we'd later call reddit would involve lots of reading, we tried searching for "read." Somewhere in those search results was breadpig.
Sprawled on one of our battered recliners, my voice buckled with laughter as I read aloud "Breadpig!"
Steve also found it quite amusing. To think that someone registered breadpig.com with the hope of doing something with it. Just imagine what kind of startup that would have been...
It just so happened that a friend of mine from Hong Kong was also in the room with us. She didn't find it nearly as funny. I tried explaining it to her:
"You don't understand, it's a breadpig."
"Why is that funny?"
"Imagine a bread-pig, you know, bread and a pig."
"I understand. That's not funny."
It must have been a cultural thing. She probably left our place that night thinking I was an idiot.
But it didn't matter, I registered the domain and it became a running gag around reddit HQ. Steve eventually described his vision of the breadpig, a pig with bread wings, and I drew it. We've since printed exactly three shirts featuring this mythical beast that always elicit confused looks and even the occasional "Umm... What is a breadpig?"
So imagine how upset we were to learn that thanks to the horrendous UI of registerfly.com, our precious domain didn't get auto-renewed.
I've been living the last year or so with a gaping void in my soul. The spammy landing page the new owner put up just twisted the knife in a bit deeper -- it was advertising bread makers.
On a whim, I checked the WHOIS tonight and found an orphaned domain. I've warmly welcomed breadpig back to my bosom and am pleased to announce the relaunch of breadpig.com as it was meant to be.
Internet, you're welcome.
