this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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There was even an entire standards document drawn up (as a practical joke), called the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP 1.0). To this day though, there the server status response 418 - I'm a teapot still exists. It was defined as part of HTCPCP as the error code returned when you tried to get a teapot to brew coffee :)
Web nerds took their coffee seriously! Or maybe they didn't? Does doing up an entire standards document as an april fools joke count as serious or unserious?
Humorous RFCs and protocol proposals are an ancient internet tradition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day_Request_for_Comments
Engineering humour of this sort actually goes back even further -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_encabulator
Nerdy humour has probably been around as long as there have been engineers.
Learning about computer science and finding all the subtle jokes embedded in the naming conventions is peak. These nerds had humor!
Geeking out over the origins of HTTP 418 kinda got me a job once. But that was back when that kind of stuff, connecting interpersonally with the humans that you work with, mattered during hiring.
You could've stopped right there and it would've still made sense, which is sad.
Glad my lore has served you well.
I get no respect.
All you had to do was brew a coffee...
That's serious unseriousness, or in other words German humor
German humor is nothing to laugh at.
Anzeige ist raus
The wurst.
German... what now?
I'm not laughing.
Google also has this little easter egg: https://www.google.com/teapot
It's impossible to know until you observe them. They're Shrödinger's Nerds.
Nerds making joke standards is nothing unique.
See also: IETF RFC 1149 and IPoAC
Another example of such an attack
CW: animals being eaten
that's not a man-in-the-middle attack (unless the bird is a trained falcon or something), it's packet loss due to infrastructure damage
Valid. I checked again, and:
So I guess that's what's happening here