PETCO

From Wiki Gonzalez

PETCO refers to an extremely long thread that began on the old Baseball Primer Clutch Hits site in January 2003. It was prompted by a USA Today report that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) planned to protest the naming of the San Diego Padres' new stadium after PETCO, a pet store chain PETA claimed was involved with cruelty to animals.

In its early days, the thread jumped from topic to topic, but finally settled into a flamewar between BTF archrivals Retardo and David Nieporent. The debate in the United States over the prospective war against Iraq coincided with the PETCO thread, and provided a large amount of fodder.

Some saw the thread's first post by Paul Mazurkiewicz as eerily prophetic, as he remarked, "I know that this is going to probably start some sort of ridiculous debate...." Mazurkiewicz would later apologize for initiating the discussion, and, consistent with the spirit of PETCO, accidentally post the apology twice.

PETCO was migrated (more or less) from Old Primer to the new Expression Engine back end, and was called back in April 2006. Backlasher referred to the revival as a "coup d'etat" staged by users of the Primer Lounge in response to Jim Furtado's efforts to move it off the main site. He speculated as to whether Furtado would use "the nuclear option" and close the thread.

Backlasher's entry would prove to be PETCO's penultimate post, as less than an hour later the thread was indeed closed, presumably by Furtado, at a whopping 2413 posts.

[edit] References

• PETCO daily synopses
• archive.org's mirror of the PETCO thread
• PETCO's last stand