Fark in Time

March 27, 2002 6:18 AM

Are congratulations in order? Fark just made Time's 50 Best WebSites list. Is it respectability at last? Is it scary? Or just, er, deserved? It's a very conservative, but well assembled list, and Fark certainly stand outs. I say "Bravo!".
posted by MiguelCardoso to General Weblog-Related at 6:18 AM (40 comments total)

Of course it's conservative. It's Time. No one reads Time much anymore except while at the doctor or dentist's office.
posted by raysmj at 6:39 AM on March 27, 2002

Well the dissonance is all the more striking and welcome then. I like the idea of typical Time readers - of which there a lot, though not one single MetaFilter member I'd bet - checking out Fark, where the spirit of freedom lives on.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 6:44 AM on March 27, 2002

heh. how many grandmothers are going to see this article, click over to the FarkSide and immediately see *boobies*?

Subscriptions will be cancelled soon.
posted by ColdChef at 6:55 AM on March 27, 2002

I think Fark should be worried, not happy. These mainstream magazine "best of the web" lists tend to have bad karma; the sites listed tend to end up dying.

I would say this should increase their bandwidth costs nicely as well (without any concurring - or even concomitant - increase in revenue), but to be honest I'm not sure there's anybody left clueless enough to need a "50 best" list in order to find some sites worth visiting, or who has enough free time to add more sites to their Favorites list. There's a reason every Internet magazine except for Yahoo Internet Life has died, including Time's own ON; people don't need to be told how to use the Net any longer, any more than they need to be told how to listen to the radio or watch TV. In the early days of both technologies, there were all sorts of consumer publications dedicated to them; now there are zero radio magazines and only TV Guide for TV.
posted by aaron at 6:56 AM on March 27, 2002

Thank god we dodged that bullet. Can you imagine what would've happened to the level of discourse around here if a bunch of Time readers signed up?
posted by ook at 7:12 AM on March 27, 2002

I subscribe to Time.
posted by luser at 7:18 AM on March 27, 2002

Aaron: that would explain why the guy at the magazine store rolled his eyes when I asked him to direct me to the web magazines. Apparently there aren't any anymore. But when I last looked there were dozens...
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:25 AM on March 27, 2002

the sites listed tend to end up dying.

They do? I thought most of the sites listed on these things were ones like Yahoo and eBay that have already entered the immortal realms of the undead.
posted by rory at 7:27 AM on March 27, 2002

me too luser. and I found out about metafilter from their sister magazine On. i've never read fark though. sounds to stile project for me.
posted by macadamiaranch at 7:40 AM on March 27, 2002

From their intro: "Rather than waste ink telling you about the sites you're already familiar with, we decided to ferret out the terrific websites that aren't yet household names."

From the list: classmates.com. Epinions.com. The Onion. Evite. Salon. The flippin' BBC...

Uh-huh. No household names there.
posted by GaelFC at 7:44 AM on March 27, 2002

Does this have any place on Metatalk? Seriously, what differentiates this from a front page post?
posted by jonah at 7:49 AM on March 27, 2002

I know fark gets dissed a lot here, but that's one of my favorite sites. The photoshop contests have given me many uncontrollable guffaws. Plus their links have a much different flavor than what's posted here.

Another perspective, is all.
posted by rocketman at 8:19 AM on March 27, 2002

Does this have any place on Metatalk? Seriously, what differentiates this from a front page post?

Miguel wanted to talk about Fark (Weblog-related). The thread wanted to talk bout the Time list. What can you do?

I say we drop the charges and release Miguel immediately.

P.S. I only visit Fark because I'm too lazy to link directly to Priceless420. Those pictures of the day are a guilty pleasure.
posted by luser at 8:21 AM on March 27, 2002

I like Fark.com (well Fark: Drew Curtis' Fark.Com). Most of the threads to tend do devolve quickly, but it is very funny stuff.
posted by patrickje at 8:42 AM on March 27, 2002

rocketman, I know for a fact that quite a few MeFites are also Farkers. And Miguel, there's really only one Internet Mag worth reading anymore, it's strangely hard to get in paper form here in the states, but it's online version is just as good.
posted by jonmc at 8:44 AM on March 27, 2002

And Miguel, there's really only one Internet Mag worth reading anymore, it's strangely hard to get in paper form here in the states

When I asked a Shift editor a couple months back why this was, he said they stopped selling magazines in the US altogether.

and MetaFilter was in On magazine?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:16 AM on March 27, 2002

Really?
My buddy Mike is the magazine guy at the local Borders and I have him chasing it down from his import distributor. I guess I sent the poor guy on a wild goosechase. I'll tell him to call it off.
posted by jonmc at 9:31 AM on March 27, 2002

Bummer. I also enjoyed Shift.
posted by dong_resin at 9:47 AM on March 27, 2002

You can still subscribe to Shift in the US, you just can't buy it at a newstand. Although it might be cheaper to have someone in Canada subscribe to it and then have them mail it to you.
posted by riffola at 10:02 AM on March 27, 2002

>>and MetaFilter was in On magazine?

A while back it was, mathowie. Over a year ago at least--maybe even more like 2 years now. It was in their "Big List" of links at the back of the magazine--they'd said it was a cool place on the net (or some such other silly description.) I remember the issue had an article about Kozmo.com when it was first starting up. Aaah, the olden days.
posted by macadamiaranch at 10:09 AM on March 27, 2002

Borders' magazine selection has really gone downhill over the last year or so. They've stopped selling all out-of-town papers, all out-of-country papers, and a huge chunk of their out-of-country magazines. And a lot of US magazines are gone now too. Where you used to have to hunt for your selection because the mags were all packed in so close together the shelves appear to be about to explode, now there are empty holes so huge that they look like they're 3/4 of the way through a going-out-of-business sale.

Ask Mike what's up with that, jonmc. Please?
posted by aaron at 11:00 AM on March 27, 2002

TRAVEL DEALS ORBITZ www.orbitz.com...Time is so right on! I suggest bookmarking orbitz, since it is quite hard to remember such an unobtrusive site.
posted by Mack Twain at 11:24 AM on March 27, 2002

I wonder why they chose to list the BBC website, but not actually link to them... simple oversight, or something more?
posted by crunchland at 11:26 AM on March 27, 2002

I hate overarching generalizations. I am a time subscriber and a MeFier, so there.
posted by Lynsey at 12:39 PM on March 27, 2002

people who equate fark with stile have eaten too much poo for their own good.
posted by quonsar at 1:41 PM on March 27, 2002

orbitz gets none of my business.. and no love either... none. before i got opera 6, their pop-up-then-quickly-pop-unders 'caused me to accidentally close the window i was actually reading, at least a third of the time. i hope they die... in a figurative kind of way.
posted by lotsofno at 5:24 PM on March 27, 2002

www.orbitz.com

Back in the day, that was a quality website for a "tasty" beverage...
posted by j.edwards at 5:54 PM on March 27, 2002

yeah, this stuff---> , it's still around. mmmm, orbitz....
posted by jonmc at 6:12 PM on March 27, 2002

Orbitz - now with even more gravity defiance!

I was always afraid to try Orbitz, especially after I heard it described as Pikachu poop in pine sol.
posted by iconomy at 6:25 PM on March 27, 2002

I drank one. I still have four of them breaking down in bottles in my office. It tasted like flat Sprite with suspended globs of flavorless mucus.

I registered orbitz.com after Clearly Canadian gave up on it. I then let it expire, presumably helping some domain squatter make some nice pocket change from these guys.
posted by rcade at 7:08 PM on March 27, 2002

I like the stuff! But I always seem to like what everyone else thinks sucks, so I guess thats par for the course. :)
posted by jonmc at 7:28 PM on March 27, 2002

it's still around.

Shh, you'll bring down the value of the two bottles I have left.

No, really; is it still around? I haven't been able to find it.
posted by j.edwards at 7:35 PM on March 27, 2002

I didn't like orbitz. The bitz got stuck between my teeth. Right up there with Zima in failed beverages.

(I live in Canada and have access to oodles of copies of Shift magazine. I can't see how you'd save money over a direct subscription, but if you really need a fix, we can work something out)

Oh, sorry....what was this thread about?
posted by Salmonberry at 8:44 PM on March 27, 2002

Hey, Zima's not a failed beverage!

And I took the following comment:

Can you imagine what would've happened to the level of discourse around here if a bunch of Time readers signed up?

to mean that the author was likely worried about the sheer *numbers* of people and the average cluelessness thereof.

I don't think it was a slam directed at metafilterians who happen to read Time.
posted by beth at 12:23 PM on March 28, 2002

Zima's not a failed beverage, but given that ts main demographic is 15-year-olds, i'm not sure you look like a winner if you're seen drinking it.
posted by aaron at 4:23 PM on March 28, 2002

Aaron, if you drink enough Zima, everyone looks like a winner. :)
posted by jonmc at 4:26 PM on March 28, 2002

I'd rather drink Toilet Duck.
posted by aaron at 5:31 PM on March 28, 2002

Orbitz: like vomiting backwards. (self link, but super-relevant, I swear!)
posted by D at 6:16 PM on March 28, 2002

Super-relevant in an off-topic sort of way, I suppose.
posted by D at 4:12 PM on March 29, 2002

D: It's not off-topic if it's right on-topic more than six posts after the off-topicizing takes place. :)
posted by MiguelCardoso at 9:37 PM on March 29, 2002