From April Fools to Internet Law: Testing RFC 2324's Legendary Teapot Standard

RFC 2324, an April Fools prank from 1998, defined a coffee pot control protocol (HTCPCP) complete with its own HTTP status code—418 I'm a Teapot—that somehow became permanent infrastructure embedded in every browser and HTTP library worldwide. A developer built a compliance checker to test whether servers actually return this status code, revealing the absurd truth: the joke has become real enough to formally test for compliance. This project highlights how internet culture can transform a silly prank into enduring protocol, celebrating 28 years of an engineering in-joke that nobody wants to remove.