October 2009

  • Craigslist Files #45: Citizen's Arrest

    By msarko on 10/28/09 5:30pm
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    Andy Ward posts to Casual Encounters... for art.Andy Ward posts to Casual Encounters... for art.

    Well, folks, I asked and you delivered. The following three submissions are craigslist posts discovered by your fellow Net Insanity readers. Thanks to everybody who sent me posts and offered descriptions. Um, except for those of you who weren't particularly funny. Those emails were a complete waste of my time, so I hope you talentless hacks take the lack of your submissions today as a sign that you should stick to whatever menial labor occupies your puny minds and leave the comedy writing to us geniuses. Let's get right into it.



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  • The Trump Network: It's Actually Real

    By msarko on 10/26/09 5:18pm
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    I used to think I was too jaded to be shocked by anything on the Internet anymore. Just a couple weeks ago, I was secure in my ability to brush off anything that popped up on my screen. So, when I found an ad on craigslist for a get rich quick scheme using the name and likeness of shameless billionaire Donald Trump, I just assumed what any reasonable person would. Honestly, would a super-rich asshole like Trump really take the time to rope a bunch of idiots into an affiliate marketing scam using the worst web design imaginable? It turns out, the answer is "yes".



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  • Youtube Nation: Things That Don't Suck

    By msarko on 10/23/09 4:59pm
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    I spend a lot of time on this blog ragging on the incredibly stupid things people put on the Internet. Like a cop who has to deal with the scum of the world on a daily basis, I can sometimes lose myself in the ugliness and risk becoming a part of the ugliness. So, every now and then I need to wallow in something that isn't inherently awful, if only to remind myself that the Internet is a neutral tool that depends on its users to make it good or bad. For the record, they usually choose "bad". This week's selected video actually consists of several layers of goodness and I'm going to talk about all of them today.



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  • Craigslist Files #44: ROFO

    By msarko on 10/21/09 4:32pm
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    Andy Ward rocks my socks... with his artAndy Ward rocks my socks... with his art

    There are some regions of craigslist I just haven't spent much time exploring for one reason or another. By far the most neglected section is the staggeringly extensive forum. Subdivided into dozens of specific topics and sloppier than a 1995 Angelfire page about super-secret cheat code rumors, the CL forums somehow distill the already dangerous levels of depravity and stupidity of the site down to an intellectual poison. Reading these non-sequitur threads is like freebasing a combination of the personals and Rants & Raves. It's astounding that people even seek some form of connection in what can easily qualify as the single worst place on the Internet, the sewer-within-a-sewer of pure human awfulness. If I was going to go into this mess, I was going to go in deep. So, I decided to put down stakes in ROFO.



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  • Degradation Station: Simpsons Porn

    By msarko on 10/19/09 5:13pm
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    hawthawt

    Recently, credit-hogging windbag and occasional cartoonist Matt Groening decided to once again pimp out his blue-haired MILF creation, Marge Simpson, this time to Playboy magazine. Though this particular spread has received a lot of media attention (to which I myself have shamelessly contributed), the Playboy feature isn't Marge's first foray into mainstream spank territory. Maxim reached its yearly absurdity quota a while back when they gave a few pages to shots of the yellow-skinned mom cleaning her kitchen floor in that oh-so-sexy way that all women invariably do. What's really sad about the Playboy spread isn't that Maxim did it first or even that it shows just how clueless both Matt Groening and Hugh Hefner have become. No, the real shame here is that Playboy, a magazine that actually achieved some measure of cultural credibility in the 70's and 80's, has become so irrelevant that it's now cribbing from the worst corners of the Internet. Cartoon porn is the Internet's love that dare not speak its name, a proclivity so vile and embarrassing that when it passes by furryism in the hall the two share a silent, knowing glance of commiseration and self-loathing.



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  • Youtube Nation: Sammich Fury

    By msarko on 10/16/09 4:11pm
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    Note: The above video is not safe for work.

    Recently a candid video featuring an epic public freak-out has been making the rounds on the ever-increasing circuit of amateur video sites. It didn't premiere on Youtube, exactly. "I WANT MY CHICKEN!" was more of a simul-cast on multiple sites, Youtube among them. When gems like this video are floating around, it would be a shame for me to ignore all non-Youtube sources, so I've decided not to be a purist. I'll never be able to resist videos like this one, not because they capture a human being achieving some kind of aristeia of ugliness, but because there are so many wonderful details one misses upon first viewing. If one of the great cinema directors were asked to replicate this scene, he or she would spend weeks fiddling with the storyboards.



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  • Craigslist Files #43: Image-Tastic Special Edition

    By msarko on 10/14/09 4:15pm
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    Scanning the manifold wonders of any given craigslist site I am treated to a wide variety of awful pictures. What I find most unfathomable about these images is why anyone would want to represent themselves with what are undoubtedly the worst shots possible. Craigslist people all have some sort of blind spot when it comes to these things. Some seem numb to creepiness, others aren't self-aware enough to realize they are projecting pure dissatisfaction or desperation. I generally don't include the images attached to the posts I feature in this column, when pictures are actually attached, but today I'm going to do something different. I'm going to forgo the text in the posts and go straight to the images, but I'm also giving myself some restrictions. I won't be using anything from the personals pages because that just wouldn't be sporting, but everything else is fair game.



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  • Mental Checkout: The Internet's Inbred Child

    By msarko on 10/12/09 4:08pm
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    special thanks to Andy Ward for the original imagespecial thanks to Andy Ward for the original image

    If you're reading this, I'm going to assume you at least attended elementary school and therefore remember how short the list of interests were among your peers. The boys liked video games, dirt bikes, trucks and sports. I'm going to assume the girls liked horses, clothes and, hell, I dunno, sparkly crap. The Internet is a lot like an elementary school classroom, only with slightly more porn. Internet people like ninjas, boobs, ironic felines and guns. Beyond that, it's all secret niche interests. Go to any popular online forum and you'll find all of those memes and obsessions, but it only stands to reason because thousands of people log in. But why read the poorly-written comments of a mass of strangers when you can get a condensed dose of the Internet in a single website? That site is Mental Checkout.



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  • Youtube Nation: The Shot Heard 'Round Nowhere

    By msarko on 10/9/09 5:01pm
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    I'm not sure if you readers have heard, but the American economy is in something of a pickle. People who had money have lost it in droves while people who never had any money are getting somehow poorer. It's a tough position we're in, seeing as how the people who oil our country's massive commercial machine are... what's the term I'm looking for? Ah, yes. Evil sons of bitches all. The little guy just doesn't have much of a voice when it comes to big business and government-level economics. That doesn't mean the little guy has no voice. Yes, it is that small, screeching, unfathomably annoying voice called the Internet and its ever-expanding echo chamber is Youtube.



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  • Craigslist Files: Citizen's Arrest Contest

    By msarko on 10/7/09 6:05pm
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    It's Wednesday, which means it's time for the weekly reminder to send in your submissions for October's Craigslist Files: Citizen's Arrest contest. Just click the Contact Us button on the right side panel to email us with the weirdest, funniest, most absurd craigslist posts you can find. Winners will see their selected posts along with their own descriptions/mockery at the end of this month in a special edition of The Craigslist Files, with a special digital prize for First Place.

    Happy hunting, readers.

  • Craigslist Files #42: The Source

    By msarko on 10/7/09 3:29pm
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    a good place for an ambusha good place for an ambush

    Craigslist began as a small, mostly closed operation in San Francisco at the dawn of popular Internet use. Today, there's a page for most major cities on the planet. I've visited the craigslist sites for foreign countries, small towns and many a metropolis, so I have a pretty good feel for how this tool works. Though craigslist is designed to be as easy to use as possible, there's still something of a learning curve. Cities that haven't had craigslist for very long tend to feature posts that suggest whoever wrote them didn't really understand how the site functions, sort of like when someone born prior to 1950 tries to leave a message on an answering machine. They don't comprehend that the technology isn't conscious, that it depends entirely on user input. It would stand to reason, then, that cities hosting craigslist for a long time would be unusually canny with the site. I decided to visit the San Francisco Bay Area craigslist page to find out.



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  • Edmund: A Not-Japanese Video Game About Rape

    By msarko on 10/5/09 3:54pm
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    Though I mostly remain imprisoned in the dank, catacomb-like Net Insanity corporate office, my only sustenance coming from whatever scraps my faceless masters deem fit for my wretched excuse for a body, I occasionally get the chance to venture out to other sites on work release. One of those sites is Gamehead, to which I contribute a monthly highlight of the best browser games currently on the Web. Over the course of any given month, I play a wide variety of browser games searching for those that are actually entertaining, but in the process I come across some really horrible stuff, too. A lot of that ends up in Net Insanity's recurring Awful Flash Game Roundup, but every once in a while a game is so abhorrent that it deserves a more in-depth variety of ridicule. Today, that game is Paul Greasley's rape and murder simulator Edmund.



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  • Youtube Nation: Parade of Pudge

    By msarko on 10/2/09 2:49pm
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    On most occasions I can be referred to as an esoteric fellow. I enjoy obscure films, have a very specific way I like to receive my ethanol poisoning and yes, I do actually have a favorite Renaissance era composer. But ya know what? Sometimes I just have to indulge the simpler pleasures in life. Thus, I have decided to compile a series of Youtube videos featuring fat men dancing.



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