It doesn’t matter why Disney owns the domain muppetfucker.net. It doesn’t matter how they came by it. It doesn’t matter what muppetfucker.net could contain, or might someday contain.
What matters is that Disney does own muppetfucker.net—that within their vast holdings, which stretch across film, theme parks, merchandising, sports, music, and countless baubles, there is also the domain name for muppetfucker.net. This is a piece of factual information that you can hold onto; you may return to it in times of confusion, like a gravitational north.
The fact, which affirms with finality that the center will hold, was first discovered by YouTuber Joshua Gillespie, who tweeted it out last week.
Gizmodo dug up the story behind the domain name. Apparently, Disney acquired muppetfucker.net along with the Jim Henson Company in 2004. Henson’s company snatched it up in response to an Austin-based DJ who had started using the name in the mid-90s. When the Jim Henson Company found out the name after DJ Muppetfucker netted a little bit of local press, they were not enthused. They sent him a cease and desist on a Kermit letterhead, which he apparently did not fuck, as he was able to tweet it out 15 years later.
While the story behind the domain name is helpful, it is ancillary to the fact, which shines glorious and pure upon us all. Disney owns muppetfucker.net.
Muppetfucker.biz, meanwhile, is still available.
[Note: Gizmodo, like The A.V. Club, is owned by Univision Communications.]