"Are you playing with that chicken AGAIN?"

By Chris Dunmire

Burger King has created a novel "viral" online marketing tool for promoting their newest fast food chicken sandwich: Meet the Subservient Chicken. Viral like germ-spreading from person to person, because as soon as you play with it you'll inevitably share it with 10 more people.

This online chicken is one processed nugget. Someone dressed up in a chicken costume appears to stand in front of a Web cam when you log onto the site and proceeds to do just about any rated-G thing you tell it to by typing your instructions into a command field. And if you try to make chicken do something naughty, chicken will give you a stern finger shaking "tsk tsk!"

Here's some of the commands I typed:

• "Sit on the floor."
• "Kiss my monitor."
• "Walk like an Egyptian."
• "Throw the sofa pillows on the floor."
• "Sit in Indian-style on the chair."
• "Do the Hokey Pokey."
• "Lay on the sofa."
• "Jump up and down three times and touch your nose."

As expected, chicken obeyed. However, when I typed, "Kiss my grits," chicken waved the naughty shame finger at me. Really, after the novelty of making the chicken do my bidding wore off, I began feeling sorry for him. Was I interrupting him from watching the preempted American Idol from last night? Was chicken in the middle of a bubble bath? And just what does chicken do between visitors?

Well guess what? It isn't all white meat after all. After a few days of playing with this thing on the Internet, I found out that the programming behind the chicken activity wasn't real time at all. Although appearing very realistic at following your directions, Subservient Chicken is actually programmed to respond to various keywords that are typed in the command line. Thus, "shake your thang" and "do the twist" would possibly yield the same chicken act.

Perhaps I was a bit disappointed in the truth, that I really didn't hold virtual power over my poultry pal. But hey, it was still a lot of fun to play with, and I won't cry foul. Like the germ-fiend I am, I pass the gimmick (and the illness of seeking online diversions) on to you. •

(January 2009 update: Subservient Chicken is still there!)

© 2004, 2009 Chris Dunmire. All rights reserved.