The Bunny Manifesto — Wait But Why

Is it weird to follow up a chilling post about the death tolls of the most horrible human tragedies with a post called The Bunny Manifesto? Does it make this a kind of fucking weird website for Monday’s post thumbnail image to be a group of circles, each representing thousands of lives lost, and Thursday’s post to follow with a thumbnail of an obese rabbit staring blankly into the camera?

I’d like to offer an explanation for Wait But Why’s behavior, but there is none. All I’ll say is that it’s this particular obese rabbit that got us into this situation in the first place:

I came across this photo during an unrelated google images search. “Oh look, a baby hippo,” I thought, and clicked to see a close-up, only to realize that it wasn’t a hippo, but a bunny. Never did I imagine I’d mistake a bunny for a hippo, but there we were, face to face.

Things took a further turn downward, as I realized that the concept of a bunny confused me in general. Is a bunny the same thing as a rabbit? How about a hare? I decided to take it to google images.

The results were unsettling.

Not only was I confused about what a bunny is—and not only did google images turn out to be confused about what a bunny is—bunnies themselves are confused about what a bunny is.

Searching google images, first for bunnies, then for rabbits, and then for hares, led me down a bizarre road, through a motley crew of somewhat disturbing creatures of all different varieties.

It calls for a full exploration. Get yourself settled in—I’m warning you now, this is gonna get weird.

Before we get going, I’d like to dispel three myths that were proven very wrong during this process:

Myth 1) Bunnies are normal looking.

Have a look at what I now know is a total anomaly in the bunny world—the normal-looking bunny:

This is what I always pictured when I imagined a bunny, and you should enjoy him for a second before I spend this post tearing apart your conception that this is what a bunny looks like.

It turns out that the above bunny is just a front. It’s what bunnies hope you think they look like. The troubling reality is that they far more often look about as normal as this:

This creature could easily pass for an alien in a science fiction movie.

Myth 2) Bunnies are cute.

Again, you probably think of a bunny being adorable, like this delightful little being.

False. Most bunnies are about this level of cute:

Myth 3) Bunnies are likable.

I want you to look at this bunny:

Imagine what he’s like to be around. Does he look playful? Does he look like he’d be pleasant to hang out with?

No, he doesn’t. He looks like a real dick. He looks bitey, he looks self-involved, and he strikes me as a huge pain in the ass to spend time with.

When I see photos of dogs and cats, I usually want to play with them. They’re on the same wavelength as humans. But it’s impossible to picture a bunny bouncing over to the door excitedly when you get home like a dog or just being calm and self-aware like a cat. The only two things I can picture a bunny being are scared and a dick.

So let’s just keep our expectations in the right place here.

Okay time to dive in. We’ll start with a straightforward one:

This bunny isn’t a disaster like some of the others, but just compare him (I’m making them all male, just deal with it) to the “normal-looking bunny” up top. The normal bunny looks like a normal expressionless animal. This one looks like a hapless loser. And animals aren’t supposed to look human adjectives, like hapless. Yet bunnies look human adjectives all the time, as you’ll see.

One of the other things bunnies have the odd inclination to do is to look like other animals. I’m not really sure why they think this is okay, but this behavior is rampant in the bunny community. For example, this bunny is posing as a hamster:

This one is pretending to be a cat:

This one, a bulldog:

This bunny looks like a large rat on the verge of tears:

Kangaroo:

Stick a couple tusks in these two jowls and you’ve completed your fake walrus:

Here we have a miniature knockoff lion. Borderline insane behavior. But at least I’ll give it to him that it’s a pretty accurate depiction:

A less successful attempt:

This one read Where The Wild Things Are and decided to look like one of the characters.

This one looks like a bunny, which is refreshing. But is he kidding with that fucking tongue? Of course, bunnies can’t just have a normal tongue you’d think they’d have, it has to be an absurdly mini human-looking tongue.

Finally, we get to a pretty normal-looking, even cute, bunny—naturally, he ruins it by doing obnoxious air quotes:

Self-esteem doesn’t run at a premium in the bunny world, but this one takes the cake for having the lowest:

An emo bunny:

Someone out there bought a bunny, envisioning playing with something like this (clearly without checking google images first):

And couldn’t have been too pleased to end up here:

Here we have two of the eeriest-looking animals I have ever laid eyes on:

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night and the two of them are just there, in your room, in that exact pose, looking at you. Horrifying.

Quick side note—so you know how sometimes you look at a word for long enough that it starts to just look weird, and wrong? And you’re suddenly not sure how anything is spelled? That’s how I feel right now about photos of bunnies. I’ve been looking at so many of them that I’m now not even sure about anything anymore. Like this little fellow here:

Right now, this looks fully like a little dog to me. But I’m not sure if it actually looks like a normal bunny and I’m just so fucked up in the head that I can’t tell anymore. Someone please let me know.

Continuing. And what better way to continue than a meth addict bunny.

Here we have a full-fledged Wasp on his estate in Martha’s Vineyard.

Now we move onto the angriest animal I’ve ever seen. Normal animals get angry in an animal way. But this bunny is furious in a human way. Again, not normal.

Here we have two bunnies posing as human grandparents, which would be odd enough without whatever the hell is happening with the brown one’s ear.

Honey Boo Boo’s mom:

Mean boarding school headmaster:

Your mom in the 70’s. Just really not clear why a bunny would look like that.

This bunny’s pretty sure he regrets bringing this girl back to his apartment:

Now we’re getting into super weird territory. Here is a legitimate British cartoon character bunny:

A bunny who forgot to stop being a fetus:

A fucking egg bunny. I don’t even care anymore.

Oh for Christ’s sake. Really? You have one life, and this is what you’re bringing to the table? Moving on…

Sure, why the fuck not. Nothing could surprise me at this point.

Congrats, cloud bunny. I thought I had seen it all, and you go ahead and do this. Enjoy your life.

Well I’d say that’s just about plenty for one day. I’ll never think of bunnies the same again now that I know the grim reality, and I assume you won’t either.

I’ll leave you with a bunny that’s just fucking sick of being a bunny. Understandably.