Kiwibank says it wants to ‘protect others from harmful content’, but for every lustful post killed by a legal threat, another 10 take its place.
“I WANT TO FUCK THE KIWIBANK SHEEP,” the post reads. When it was originally sent out on X by the account @ehukuu on July 24, those words were accompanied by a gif of Kiwibank’s green-maned mascot Buck admiring her stylish new haircut. If you look at it now though, the gif is gone, replaced by a blank grey square containing 14 thudding words: “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”
The “I WANT TO FUCK THE KIWIBANK SHEEP” post has become ground zero for an unfurling dispute over what Kiwibank views as harm reduction and its opponents see as legal suppression and censorship. One thing isn’t in doubt: Kiwibank has been trying to stop people illustrating any kind of desire to fuck its cartoon sheep, and it has gone to great legal lengths to pursue that aim.
The lustful thoughts about Buck had been bubbling for a little while before @ehukuu sent their capslocked post. Back on July 18, the account @jestermaxxing posted “They’re just rumours man. Kiwis don’t think sheep are sexy… Kiwibank’s new sheep mascot,” alongside the picture of Buck at the hairdresser. That post only garnered 21 likes. @ehukuu’s more direct missive brought the sentiment into the mainstream, gathering more than 5,000 likes from fellow Buck admirers. Momentum grew further thanks to a quote tweet from @MaoistStdEn reading “Years of effort to convince the world New Zealanders don’t want to fuck sheep has gone down the drain in one tweet”. It went even more viral, gathering around 93,000 likes and nearly 5,000 reposts.
Kiwibank isn’t the first organisation to have its mascot sexualised. Kellogg’s Frosties’ figurehead Tony the Tiger had to beg furries to stop sending him porn in 2016. McDonald’s leaned into the phenomenon with its sexy Grimace bus, while Duolingo’s owl Duo has a disconcertingly horny social media presence. Thanks to her viral fame, Kiwibank’s Buck became the latest mascot to find a home in people’s rich fantasy lives. Bluesky’s thriving furry community started posting their own images of her. Though The Spinoff hasn’t viewed them, it understands some were quite pornographic.
The posters’ efforts were apparently popular. One of the accounts posting them, @vantabats, said Buck’s alluring appearance and origin story allowed her to quickly gain a hold on furry hearts. “She’s just good looking as far as furry standards go!” they explained to The Spinoff. “She’s a charming, confident character with great hair. And with New Zealand as a whole already having all the ‘sheep shagger’ memes, this New Zealand company coming out with a cute talking sheep character was the perfect setup for the internet to do what it does best.”
Still, as is often the case with lust, the feeling petered out naturally. Likes stopped pouring in for Buck. The eruption of passion may have fizzled completely if it wasn’t for the events of September 16, when Kiwibank started sending out floods of legal notices aimed at scrubbing any images of Buck that were connected to a sexual thought, feeling or sentiment from the internet.
The Spinoff has seen several of the takedown requests, which were issued under the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). They were sent out by Christopher Young, a partner at the prominent law firm MinterEllisonRuddWatts who specialises in intellectual property law. The notice viewed by The Spinoff accuses 10 accounts, including @jestermaxxing, of having “taken Kiwibank’s distinctive Buck image and used it to make highly sexualised and inappropriate copies which infringe the Kiwibank copyright”. X appears to have complied with the complaint. Visit any of the posts now, and they all contain a message saying their media cannot be displayed as it has been removed in response to a report from the copyright holder.
The account @jestermaxxing is bemused by the notice. He told The Spinoff that while he’s reflective about Kiwibank enforcing its copyright, he resents being accused of creating a “highly sexualised copy” of Buck. That is simply not the case, he said. He posted an image from Kiwibank’s own ad material and sees their DMCA request as a tacit acknowledgement from the bank itself that it, seemingly accidentally, has created a hot sheep. Though he wants to issue a clarification: “My tweet was a joke, obviously I hope. I do not think the drawing of a sheep is sexy – put that in the paper!” The publisher of the original viral Buck tweet, @ehukuu, is similarly put out at being accused of having created a sexualised image. “I feel that was very unfair because their DMCA claim put me among people’s adult drawings,” they told The Spinoff.
Young also issued takedown notices to a host of furry accounts on Bluesky. @vantabats had one image of Buck removed. They took the blow in their stride, replacing the original with an image of a new sheep with black wool that wouldn’t resemble Buck’s distinctive green appearance as much. That was taken down as well under the DMCA. Though they acknowledge Kiwibank is within its rights to protect its intellectual property, they’re annoyed about the bank removing an augmented image. Besides that, they just find it “goofy” seeing a large company go to great lengths and expense hunting down images posted by an account with just 2,000 or so followers.
Other Bluesky furry accounts have accused Kiwibank of censoring sexy sheep art that wasn’t even connected to Buck in any way, essentially making their work collateral damage in a war over a reputably fuckable farm animal from New Zealand.
In response to questions from The Spinoff, Kiwibank issued a one-line statement saying its efforts were primarily focused on harm reduction. “We have taken reasonable steps to protect others from harmful content and to address the misuse of Kiwibank intellectual property,” it said.
Whatever the bank’s reasons for the crackdown, it’s clear many people on social media see its efforts as overreach. In a classic example of the Streisand effect in action, hundreds of people have responded to news of the DMCA notices by standing up, shouting “no I’m Spartacus”, and posting about Buck in an aggressively horny fashion.
Log into X now and you’ll be bombarded by the posts. “You can’t copyright our culture,” says @slinky__malinki alongside a censored image of Buck. One account has been set up that appears to be entirely devoted to wanting to have sex with Buck. The anonymous account @mothmaam420 has posted an image of some sperm. “God I’m getting tired! How long ‘til we reach the fallopian tubes,” one asks. “Bruh we inside buck the kiwibank sheep,” another replies. The fallout appears to be spreading. “I want to fuck the National Bank horse,” says one account.
Ask some of the posters what they’re up to, and they’ll say they’re fighting back against what they see as corporate censorship. “It’s mostly mischief but it’s a deserving target and a warning to others not to try controlling this stuff,” says the pseudonymous account @francismcrae, who has been martialling some of the resistance to Kiwibank’s efforts. One of the accounts who’s posted regularly about Buck, @kaitaiafriar, expresses a similar sentiment. “I have a vested interest in being allowed to do lil goofs and bits at the expense of big corporations,” he says.
Sure, their campaign may be reinvigorating New Zealand’s reputation as a nation of sheep shaggers. But for these posters, it’s worth incurring reputational damage to defeat, or at least roundly mock, a legal endeavour to suppress what are, for the vast majority of them, jokes. Come join us in posting about wanting to fuck Buck, they say. It may be weird, but the cause is righteous, so let your shame fall to the floor like so much sexy hair tumbling from a sheep’s head.
