HAHA so that was you. That was a good one! Yes and that title is definitely slightly misleading I kinda didn't want it to get so long and wanted that slight clickbait effect.

Yep I actually cannot control the status code at all. Part of what made this a fun and hacky project was the fact that I was actually redirecting to the actual URLs by catching the 404s. So, the only way i could think of catching the infinite loop was to supply the domain. That being said, I do appreciate the feedback and it's always great to learn more!