Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Bert is Evil
"Bert is Evil" is the name of a heavily mirrored web site, founded by Dino Ignacio, which featured Bert, a Muppet character on the American children's television program Sesame Street.
The website, 1998 Webby winner for best weird site, featured manipulated images of the puppet consorting with nefarious figures including Adolf Hitler and Jerry Springer, and present at tragedies such as the Hindenburg crash, humorously offered as "proof" that Bert was no mere innocent children's television character. The "Evil Bert" phenomenon was picked up by other humorists, who created their own images linking Bert to current and historical atrocities.
In 2001, an undoctored photograph [1] of a protest rally in Bangladesh supporting Osama bin Laden, showing a collage-style poster of bin Laden with a small image of Bert over his left shoulder, was distributed by the Reuters news agency. The original image of Osama bin Laden and Bert had been created (using an image editing tool) by humorist J-roen earlier and placed on a website, and the person who made the poster in Bangladesh copied it from the World Wide Web, leaving the image of Bert in his collage.
After this photo was released on the news wires, Ignacio took down the "Bert is Evil" section of his website, stating that he doesn't want to undermine the character in the eyes of children who watch Sesame Street. "I am doing this because I feel this has gotten too close to reality," he said. For the full message text, see [2]. Despite Ignacio's request that no "mirrored" versions of the site remain on the Internet, copies of Bert is Evil can still be found online.
For a detailed account of the use of the image, in South Asia as well as by Western news agencies, see [3]. This also argues against the notion that inclusion of the Bert image is some kind of coded communication. It is more likely that the protester did not know who Bert is, or that the image he used was a parody.
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