This site will mail flies to someone for $20, do not spend $20 to mail flies to someone

By Fusion Staff  |  August 20, 2015 | 2:15pm
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There’s a website called Flybomb.com. The site is probably an attempt at a joke—it’s “About Us” page has the phrase “We’re a team of underpaid entomologists looking to diversify our revenue streams.” and a stock photo of lab coat-clad scientists.

In general, the whole thing reads like it was put together by someone with a lot of time on their hands, and perhaps also a lot of flies.

The site, which promises that for $19.99 it will mail a tube of a dozen houseflies to a recipient of your choosing, is the latest in the the proud (read: bad) tradition of Ship X to your friends/enemies/strangers/political nemeses web services.

Remember the beginning of this year, when an Australian man started a site offering to “Ship Your Enemies Glitter,” and then sold it for $85,000? Or the charming site that lets you ship literal crap to someone? Or the one that sends a piece of paper with an image of someone giving the middle finger printed on it?

Here are the options this time around: a) the site is a bad joke attempting to make fun of the internet’s most boring sort of “jokey” service, or b) it’s real, in which case you should not pay people to mail live animals that are going to die anyway to other people.

This is the trend that has slowed but, as of yet, will not die. You can send your friends a potato. You can send them “nothing.”

Hopefully this is the last site with this conceit.

This has been an only-slightly moralizing public service announcement. Do not send flies to your friends.

Ethan Chiel is a reporter for Fusion, writing mostly about the internet and technology. You can (and should) email him at [email protected]

 
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