April 2009

  • Craigslist Files #19

    By msarko on 4/30/09 7:47pm
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    It occurs to me that creating a craigslist post is roughly akin to shouting into the long night of winter in a desert. Compile your strangest, most objectionable or just plain embarrassing desires and stick them on the Internet for any curious or mocking parties to see; that's the concept at the foundation of this website. Craigslist is the perfect storm of Internet ridiculousness. Anonymity, lack of moderation or editing, vague and flexible categories. Add video and it would be a one-stop address for unwitting humiliation. All of the following individuals actually believed they would connect with others like them. For their own lonely sakes, I almost hope they succeeded.




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  • Stars of the Internet: BigMastadon

    By msarko on 4/27/09 8:54am
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    In the distant past of 2008, a creature crawled up from the eldritch muck of the American South bearing more horror than a thousand unfunny cthulu references. In a mere four minutes and thirty-five seconds, the individual known to the Web as BigMastadon introduced himself and then unleashed his fury on forty Totino's brand Pizza Rolls.

    Let's pause right here to consider the Pizza Roll as something that actually exists in this world and not in the fevered imagination of an unusually lucid stoner. The item is essentially the top portion of a slice of pizza scraped off of the crust, loaded into an injector and spewed forth into a shell of greased, flash-fried flour. The scraped toppings don't even come from a halfway-decent slice of pizza. More like those horrible squares of bargain-bin pizza they used to serve in elementary schools in the early 90's.

    Now, eating just one Pizza Roll can be passed off as an indulgent hors-d'oeuvre.

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  • The Craigslist Files: Free Stuff Edition

    By msarko on 4/22/09 12:08pm
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    With all this stuff on the news lately about a murder being linked to a craigslist personals ad, I thought it would be best if we explored a different facet of the website's depravity and stupidity this week. Lucky for us and yet so unfortunate for the rest of the world, craigslist not only allows people to give their awful selves to others, it creates a venue for the sale and trade of their horrible possessions as well. So, come along with me for a special regurgi-tastic edition of The Craigslist Files as we watch actual individuals who somehow qualify as human beings trying to give away their junk to other iterations of their growing sub-species. jogging stroller Older jogging stroller.

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  • From the Idiots Who Brought You Creationism in Schools...

    By msarko on 4/19/09 11:47pm
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    Ah. Another day, another incomprehensible and terminally ugly website promoting a senseless theory and/or fringe Christianity. Seriously, why can't you readers send me more websites that entertain obscure sexual fetishes or some kind of neo-nazi extravaganza? I long for some other variety of ridiculous. But since my approach to this job has consisted of being a choosy beggar, I guess I'll just have to go ahead and mock Frank Hatch until my fingers go numb.

    Now, I know what you're thinking- Why make fun of that kinda hot, kinda scary chick from Battlestar Galactica? But you are mistaken.

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  • Craigslist Files #17: Entering Rants and Raves

    By msarko on 4/15/09 10:59am
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    How is it that I've been doing this feature for four and a half months and yet I've never set even one click into Rants and Raves? If mining for content over at M4W is like shooting fish in a barrel, then R&R is like a barrel full of fish who commit suicide whenever someone pops the top. Honestly, Rants and Raves is the 21st century equivalent of the wall outside a brothel in ancient Rome. It's full of the most idiotic garbage the barely-literate dreck of the post-industrial world can manage to scrawl in their fits of anger and aneurysm-inducing stupidity. And I don't mean inducing an aneurysm in any intelligent reader.

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  • I'm Only Writing One Post About Time Cube

    By msarko on 4/13/09 9:16pm
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    The name of this blog is Net Insanity, but I mostly write about stuff that is simply stupid or inane. It's high time I focus on something that actually is the product of waning mental health. It's not that there's a lack of this kind of material online. Quite the opposite, actually. This is really more an indication of my own limits as a writer. There are only so many ways to point and laugh (with not just a little unease) at the rantings of someone who really ought to be medicated. Sure, much of what's out there only sounds insane until you realize it's just a scam designed to dupe idiots out of significant amounts of money. But every now and then, a website pops up that is so incoherent, so ugly, so irrevocably warped that not even the most imbecilic surfers would open their wallets for it.

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  • Craigslist Files #16: Fake Post Heaven

    By msarko on 4/8/09 4:56pm
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    Anyone who follows this blog (and thank you x1,000,000 for that) knows that I am no stranger to making craigslist posts of dubious content. It's all too easy to succumb to the siren's song of prankdom when faced with a completely anonymous system that draws in gullible people like a giant Internet bug zapper. In moments of sheer vanity and hubris I believe myself to be the only prankster on the site, but my better judgment forces me to look at some of the other posts as if they could not possibly be real. Maybe it's out of some misguided hope that there aren't actually people out there who want these things, or possibly just a desire to have some sort of kinship on this awful utility, however hollow. The following is a collection of craigslist posts I believe, or at least hope, are written by liars, liars whose pants are, to some degree, harboring fires.  



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  • Scott Bakula is So Gonna Sue

    By msarko on 4/6/09 2:02am
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    I believe I have developed a sure-fire way to not only fix up to 50% of the ridiculous crap on the Internet but to also bring a new sense of balance and order to society in the flesh. I believe that everyone should be forced by law to wear a hat, shirt, or jacket listing the top 10 websites for which they are at least partially responsible. At first I thought it would be a good idea to make people carry around a pamphlet listing their top 10 most visited websites, but that would be unfair for every poor schmuck who received over a dozen fake links to goatse.cx, or the deluge of Rickrolling from the past couple years.

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  • Craigslist Files: The Crossed Line

    By msarko on 4/1/09 4:49pm
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    Sometimes life gets to be a lethal combination of lonely and boring. When it does, horrible things can happen. It can lead to hilarious abominations like backyard wrestling and I'm fairly certain it's responsible for 2/3 of all incidents of arson in the United States. For me, it resulted in a fateful Autumn night of pretending to be a girl on craigslist. The following is a play-by-play account of an actual exchange I had with a young man who posted in the Strictly Platonic section. Keep that in mind throughout our correspondence. STRICTLY PLATONIC.  



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