As some of you have now guessed, we were NOT in fact taken over by the junk peddlers of “Happy Hippie.” Our url is still very much our own. We want to take this opportunity to first thank the dozens who sent us emails of sympathy and offers of help to defend against the scurrilous cyber-squatters who chose the day before April 1st to attack us. Former SM guestblogger Cicatrix wrote to us immediately:

Who the f*ck are those squatters? They’re clearly not out to sell anything, but they’ve put in a lot of thought/effort (to mock either desis or hippies, I can’t tell) for random some web-hostage-takers. It’s like they deliberately hated sepiamutiny or something. I wonder if that idiot sepiahokum person is behind this. good luck, sepia crew. tell us if there’s anything we can do.

Former guestblogger PG wrote to us later in the day:

Hey’all,
Sorry to see you’ve gotten squatted. The “products” — they’re all fake and there are no working links to buy them — are insult to injury. A friend pointed out that according to register.com, you still should have the domain name until August 4, 2006. Could you give me more info on how this happened? I’d like to help if I can. Good luck,

PG

Half the Sins of Mankind & De Novo

In addition, parts of the blogosphere were in shock (and some a bit happy) to see what had become of us (see here, here, here, here, and here). Also, a special shot-out to the dark one for being such a good sport:

I was going to post something here about how sepiamutiny got hijacked, but i’ve realized i’ve probably once again been caught by their april fool’s joke.
f*ckers 🙂
p.s.–it is quite amusing when you read the entries for “happy hippie” 🙂

Let’s not forget to mention the signed petition either. But…there were also heroes out there today. A diligent few could not be fooled by so simple and pathetic a hoax. One in particular, Kaps of DesiPundit and Sambhar Mafia, took it upon himself to figure out which bloggers had been fooled and then left a comment on each of their websites informing them of the elaborate deception. Folks, I want to humbly submit his name for special recognition during next year’s world-renowned Indibloggies. That kind of devotion to truth and justice in the blogosphere simply MUST be recognized by his peers. It was, dare I say, delightful. 🙂 Continue reading →

Our domain squatter troubles seem to have evaporated. It’s as if millions of mutineers cried out in outrage and were suddenly silenced. Welcome back.

Continue reading →