Fark.com
Encyclopedia
Fark is a community
website
created by Drew Curtis
that allows members to comment on a daily batch of news articles and other items from various websites. As of June 2009, the site boasts approximately four million unique visitors per month, which puts it among the top 100 English language websites. The site receives approximately 2,000 story submissions per day and approximately 50 of them are publicly displayed on the site.
The site is frequently used as a humorous source for news by radio stations, as well as most late night comedy shows. Founder Drew Curtis says the stories are selected without intentional political bias, but that he rather tries to run both far-left
and far-right
articles.
Links are submitted by Fark members (collectively referred to as "Farkers"), which admins can approve ("greenlight") for posting on either the main page or one of the subsidiary tab pages. All links, whether approved or not, have associated threads where users can comment on the link. Greenlit links can generate upwards of 300,000 page views in one month for the recipient. This can generate such an enormous amount of traffic
in such a short a time that smaller websites are often rendered inoperable due to congestion or simple server
failure. This is colloquially referred to as the website being "farked
" by the community.
of Lexington, Kentucky
. Curtis states that the word "fark" originated either from a chat room euphemism
for a popular four-letter obscenity, or from a drunken misspelling; although he tells people it is the former because it is a "better story that way". He registered Fark.com in September 1997, when a friend mentioned that all of the four letter domain names were disappearing. Originally, Fark contained no content except for an image of a squirrel
with large testicles. This photograph is that of a Cape Ground Squirrel
in Etosha National Park
, Namibia
, taken by photographer Kevin Shafer, who at the time worked for the Corbis Corporation
, ca. 1993. The squirrel image is no longer used in the production area of the site, but it can still be found as the server's 404 error
for pages that do not exist.
Since 1993, Curtis had frequently read morning news stories and exchanged them with friends. Although this would later become the inspiration for Fark, Curtis toyed with the idea of starting an online curry
recipe database
. In 1999, eighteen months after registering the domain name, he launched Fark as a way to share interesting news postings with his friends rather than sending them numerous emails. The first story posted was an article about a fighter pilot
who crashed while attempting to moon another fighter pilot.
During Fark's first year, the site received 50,000 page views and one million the year after. Features such as link submission and forums were added as popularity and participation grew. By January 2008, according to Curtis, the site was averaging an estimated 52 million page views per month from 4 million unique visitors. Fark was officially incorporated in the state of Delaware
as, "Fark, Inc.", on January 31, 2008.
While most of the story links on the main page are submitted by users and selected for placement based on merit, there was an incident in August 2004 in which Fark was accused of selling preferential placement of story links on the main page. The accusation stemmed from an exchange between Mahalo.com
CEO Jason Calacanis
and third party sales employee Gogi Gupta, where Gupta claimed Calacanis could buy an editorial on Fark for $
300 to $400. Curtis dismissed the incident as the result of an overenthusiastic sales
person, and subsequently fired Gupta. Gupta worked for a company called Gupta Media and did not have the authority to speak for Fark, according to Curtis.
Curtis launched Foobies.com in 2006 as a NSFW
(not safe for work) offshoot of Fark, primarily because advertisers complained about links to female breast
s on the main site. Customers could purchase NSFW links through Foobies at the price of $400 per link.
Fark launched Fark TV on January 17, 2007. The first video was a spoof
ad for a mock product called "Meth Coffee." In May 2008, Turner Broadcasting announced that it would be folding SuperDeluxe, Fark TV's host site, into the Adult Swim
brand, and laying off most of the staff, effectively canceling Fark TV.
A new design for the website was launched on April 25, 2007, with the comment, "Fark site redesign is now live. Hope nothing breaks, we're all out drinking." The new design was initially received with some controversy by many users, mostly due to the change in layout and a seemingly indifferent attitude by site moderators to user impact or feedback. In response, Drew Curtis noted the following reasons for the redesign: "Websites have to evolve over time. Otherwise you end up with a layout anachronism like the Drudge Report
. The old design was put into place years ago, over time changes were nailed on to the design like loose shingles on a leaky roof. It was time to reformat and remove a bunch of the clutter while trying to keep the core design intact." The site layout was refined over the next few weeks in accordance with many suggestions.
Curtis published the book, It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News
in May 2007. The book critically explores the mass media
industry and the go-to stories used when there is a lack of hard news to report. It sold 25,000 copies in its first 12 weeks on the market. Despite its initial strong reception, the book only received mild attention from reviewers. Salon.com
gave it a favorable review, although the only major newspaper
to review it was the Tucson Citizen
, which only gave it a mini-review.
On November 24, 2009, Fark launched a new partnership with USA Today
, as they became the exclusive host and sponsor of Fark's Geek Page, a collection of technology-related links. This represents the site's first content partnership with a major media brand. Previously, Curtis had signed a sales only deal with Maxim Online
. The page shows aggregated technology news headlines from other news sources with USA Today
's Tech section branding. Its right column displays technology content from USA Today
with video clips and a headline widget of USAToday.com
's Tech Live and Game Hunters stories.
In January 2011, Fark was sued in Los Angeles Federal Court by Gooseberry Natural Resources, LLC, for allegedly violating US Patent No. 6,370,535, titled, "System and method for structured news release generation and distribution." This patent, awarded in 2002, involves typing text into an administration system, storing it on a server, and publishing it on the Internet. Other defendants sued in the case include Reddit
, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Digg
, Geeknet
(owner of Slashdot
), TechCrunch
, Newsvine
, and Yahoo. Drew Curtis argued that Fark does not produce "news releases" or "press releases", as the lawsuit stated, and instead provides a forum for humorous links to stories on other websites. The case was settled in August 2011, for the sum of $0. Curtis later described the entire ordeal as, "a nightmare", saying:
Fark tweaked its site design a little more on June 1, 2011, with the comment, "Fark's redesign will go live at 5PM EST. Heads-up for those of you who missed the other warning threads and need a place to completely lose your mind." Having learned from the controversy caused by the 2007 redesign, Curtis introduced the new site as a preview one week (two weeks for TotalFark users) prior to June 1, to allow users to comment on the changes and provide feedback on where things were broken. The primary reason for the redesigned site is to make it easier to use and more intuitive. The site's tagline was changed from "It's not news, it's FARK" to "We don't make news. We mock it." The music tab was also dropped, due to low usage – content was rolled into the Showbiz or Video tab, where most of the content was already cross-posted anyway. An overhaul to the Fark Mobile Web site was not done at this time, but Curtis did say that small changes would be implemented over time to make the mobile site more consistent with the overall design of the new site.
and del.icio.us, Fark is a relatively small operation, run more or less singlehandedly by founder Drew Curtis
from his home in Lexington, Kentucky
. The site earns revenue from advertising
and membership in its TotalFark program. Although Curtis won't release official revenue figures, he estimated that, in 2006, the site earned just under $600,000 per year. Its classifieds section alone generates as much as $40,000 per year. Technology writer Mathew Ingram described Fark as "staggeringly successful" and noted the disparity between Fark's revenue and the amount of press given to sites like Digg
. Fark has also spoken about its steady, above average CPMs
.
Despite a fairly high revenue, Drew takes a yearly salary of just $60,000. The rest of the money goes to the site's legal "war chest" as well as to pay other expenses such as hosting, website design, and forum moderation. Additionally, Fark has been known to turn down advertising that interrupts the user experience such as pop ups
or advertisements with sound.
Curtis has used public relations to drive traffic, including interviews every Friday on TechTV
for one to one and a half years (ca. 2002–2003) about the three weirdest tech-oriented stories of the week.
, such as stupid, interesting, obvious, or dumbass. Tags that say photoshop, audioedit or videoedit are used for threads where digital content is edited for a humorous or artistic effect. In addition, the newsflash tag is used for news which is a matter of important breaking news, and an email is sent to the administrators notifying them that someone has submitted a newsflash.
Due to the large amount of headlines submitted to the site from the state of Florida
, and because "so many stupid things happen in Florida, it deserved its own Fark tag," the Florida tag was created at the suggestion of users. Similarly, articles discussing Wil Wheaton
– a Fark user himself – are given the Wheaton tag and articles discussing Christopher Walken
are occasionally given the Walken tag, though Walken has never participated on Fark.
On August 19, 2008, a new fail tag was introduced, to be used for submitted articles where the subject does something ignorant or when a major gaffe occurs. A new Caturday tag was introduced to in recognition of the caturday
meme
on December 21, 2009.
, charging $5 per month. By May 2007 there were an estimated 2,000 subscribers, generating $120,000 per year. Subscribers, known collectively as TotalFarkers or TFers, at one time had the privilege of seeing and commenting on all links submitted to the site, as opposed to only those approved for inclusion on the main page. However, as of 2010 an estimated 40% of links submitted to TotalFark are deleted within one minute of being submitted. In a typical 24-hour period, TotalFark's main page includes 1,200 to 1,800 links with associated comment threads, whereas Fark's main page includes only 60 to 80 links from that total.
Subscribers who purchase a 6- or 12-month subscription are also eligible to receive an @ultrafark.com email address. The UltraFark email service is provided through Google
's Gmail
service.
s which either originated on Fark or on other sites (such as 4chan
or Something Awful
) that have become an integral part of the community culture and used in myriad discussions in the forums, regardless of whether they apply to the topic at hand. Several groups of people seem to take a bit more abuse than others on the site, including PETA
, Catholic priests
, the French
, and Duke University
, according to Curtis. The site has also become somewhat well known for including "NSFW" (Not Safe For Work) in the headlines of links that contain images or videos of a sensitive nature, and in 2007, attempted to file a trademark
of the phrase. Fark was also involved in organizing the Rickrolling
of the New York Mets
in April 2008, when they encouraged readers to vote for Rick Astley
's Never Gonna Give You Up
as the song to be played during every home game of the 2008 season.
One particularly notable Farkism involves the acronym UFIA (Unsolicited Finger In Anus), which became a cliché after an article making the main page misquoted a judge using the line. UFIA was prominently used again in February 2005, when Drew Curtis purchased the naming rights to the Fleet Center (now TD Garden) in Boston, Massachusetts for the single day of February 28, 2005. The consensus choice of Fark's readers was that it should be re-dubbed the "Fark.com UFIA Center". In the end, however, Boston Garden
was chosen as the name due to obscenity
concerns. In April 2006, a Fark member convinced the Tennessee Department of Transportation
to erect an Adopt a Highway
sign in the name of UFIA on the two miles of State Route 63 west of the intersection of SR 63 and U.S. Route 25E
. The Department required a definition of UFIA, which was explained as, “Uniting Friends in America.” The sign remained up for a few days, but was ultimately removed once authorities were informed of the origins of the acronym.
Another popular Farkism involves KABC-TV
Consumer Specialist Ric Romero
, which began on October 19, 2005, when he wrote a news story on the "new" internet phenomenon of blog
ging. The story was then picked up by Fark, where he was ridiculed for posting a story about something that many people did not consider "news" and was actually quite obvious. Over the course of the next several years, he became somewhat of a meme
on the site, as Farkers would post links to his stories, along with his photo, and a brief caption stating something obvious that everyone already knew. On December 7, 2009, Drew Curtis discovered his Facebook
fan page, which led Ric to ask the Farkers that joined his new Facebook page to donate to the Spark of Love Toy Drive, which subsequently resulted in 582 online donations totaling $13,659.20 by December 16, 2009. Romero thanked the Fark community on the news for their donations, and recognized his status as a Farkism, also reporting the "breaking news" that "Water is Wet."
s, in which users use a graphical editing program (such as Adobe Photoshop
, from which the contest draws its name) to manipulate an image provided by the creator of the contest. A similar site, Something Awful
, sponsors Photoshop Phriday contests. The image is usually manipulated for humorous effect, but can also be edited to create an aesthetically pleasing image or to showcase a poster's image manipulation skill, which is then voted on by others in the forum. The contests satisfy our desire for to see things of an incongruous, sophomoric or sexual nature, such as that pioneered by P.T. Barnum in the 19th century with his "mermaid woman" using the head of a monkey
stitched onto the body of a fish.
. Staying in a hotel with nothing to do, he posted a note up on the site asking anybody who lived in the area to email him if they wanted to join him for a beer.
is 2,310, with the average user spending 5.8 minutes per day on the site and 5,337 sites linking in. 67.2% of users originate from the United States
. The site receives approximately 2,000 story submissions per day from users, and approximately 50 of them are displayed on the main page of the site, or "green-lighted". Subscribers to the subscription TotalFark service, are able to view all 2,000 submissions per day for a $5 per month fee. There are around 500,000 user accounts on the site (including both TotalFark as well as unpaid accounts), although only about 5% actually read comments, and only 1% actually post in the forums. Greenlit links can generate upwards of 300,000 page views in one month for the recipient, which is such an enormous amount of traffic
that smaller websites are often "farked
", meaning that their servers
have crashed.
Normally, in the absence of serious news, comments in the forums on the site tend to be of a more sophomoric nature, consisting primarily of sex jokes and comments about various bodily functions. However, during major events such as the September 11 attacks or the Hurricane Katrina
aftermath, usage spikes and the site can actually be seen as a more serious outlet for news. Some users can also contribute greatly to reporting actual events; for instance, the citizen journalism
of the events during the 2009 Iranian election protests
was recognized by several major media outlets. In response to this coverage, Drew Curtis placed a green band on the letter "K" in the site's logo at the top of the page, to show support for Mir-Hossein Mousavi
.
In a June 2009 interview, Curtis said that almost all traffic coming from the People's Republic of China
and India
was from spammers, so he blocked both countries from the site.
As the site has gained in popularity, Fark has appeared numerous times in popular media outlets. In 2006, Curtis and Fark were featured on the cover of Business 2.0
magazine as part of the feature story about successful websites. In 2007 and 2009, Fark was referenced on the game show Jeopardy!
, with a category entitled "Fark.com Headlines." The site is also frequently used as a humorous source for news by many radio stations, as well as late night comedy shows. Although much to Drew Curtis' dismay, it is very rarely cited as a source for many of these stories.
Several celebrities have also stated that they either checked the website regularly or participated in its discussion forums using an account. Some of these celebrities include Alan Colmes
of Fox News, Mythbusters
co-host Adam Savage
, science fiction
author John Scalzi
, and actor Wil Wheaton
.
Online community
An online community is a virtual community that exists online and whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership ritual. An online community can take the form of an information system where anyone can post content, such as a Bulletin board system or one where only a restricted...
website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
created by Drew Curtis
Drew Curtis
Drew Curtis is the founder and an administrator of Fark.com, an Internet link dump site. He is also the author of It's Not News, It's FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News in May 2007.-Bio:...
that allows members to comment on a daily batch of news articles and other items from various websites. As of June 2009, the site boasts approximately four million unique visitors per month, which puts it among the top 100 English language websites. The site receives approximately 2,000 story submissions per day and approximately 50 of them are publicly displayed on the site.
The site is frequently used as a humorous source for news by radio stations, as well as most late night comedy shows. Founder Drew Curtis says the stories are selected without intentional political bias, but that he rather tries to run both far-left
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
and far-right
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
articles.
Links are submitted by Fark members (collectively referred to as "Farkers"), which admins can approve ("greenlight") for posting on either the main page or one of the subsidiary tab pages. All links, whether approved or not, have associated threads where users can comment on the link. Greenlit links can generate upwards of 300,000 page views in one month for the recipient. This can generate such an enormous amount of traffic
Web traffic
Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. It is a large portion of Internet traffic. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit...
in such a short a time that smaller websites are often rendered inoperable due to congestion or simple server
Web server
Web server can refer to either the hardware or the software that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet....
failure. This is colloquially referred to as the website being "farked
Slashdot effect
The Slashdot effect, also known as slashdotting, occurs when a popular website links to a smaller site, causing a massive increase in traffic. This overloads the smaller site, causing it to slow down or even temporarily close. The name stems from the huge influx of web traffic that results from...
" by the community.
History
Fark was created in 1999 by Drew CurtisDrew Curtis
Drew Curtis is the founder and an administrator of Fark.com, an Internet link dump site. He is also the author of It's Not News, It's FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News in May 2007.-Bio:...
of Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 63rd largest in the US. Known as the "Thoroughbred City" and the "Horse Capital of the World", it is located in the heart of Kentucky's Bluegrass region...
. Curtis states that the word "fark" originated either from a chat room euphemism
Euphemism
A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...
for a popular four-letter obscenity, or from a drunken misspelling; although he tells people it is the former because it is a "better story that way". He registered Fark.com in September 1997, when a friend mentioned that all of the four letter domain names were disappearing. Originally, Fark contained no content except for an image of a squirrel
Squirrel
Squirrels belong to a large family of small or medium-sized rodents called the Sciuridae. The family includes tree squirrels, ground squirrels, chipmunks, marmots , flying squirrels, and prairie dogs. Squirrels are indigenous to the Americas, Eurasia, and Africa and have been introduced to Australia...
with large testicles. This photograph is that of a Cape Ground Squirrel
Cape Ground Squirrel
The Cape Ground Squirrel is found in most of the drier parts of southern Africa from South Africa, through to Botswana, and into Namibia....
in Etosha National Park
Etosha National Park
Etosha National Park is a national park in the Kunene Region of northwestern Namibia. The park shares boundaries with the regions of Oshana, Oshikoto and Otjozondjupa....
, Namibia
Namibia
Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...
, taken by photographer Kevin Shafer, who at the time worked for the Corbis Corporation
Corbis
Corbis Corporation is an American company, based in Seattle, Washington, that licenses the rights to photographs, footage and other visual media...
, ca. 1993. The squirrel image is no longer used in the production area of the site, but it can still be found as the server's 404 error
HTTP 404
The 404 or Not Found error message is a HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with the server, but the server could not find what was requested. A 404 error should not be confused with "server not found" or similar errors, in which a connection to the...
for pages that do not exist.
Since 1993, Curtis had frequently read morning news stories and exchanged them with friends. Although this would later become the inspiration for Fark, Curtis toyed with the idea of starting an online curry
Curry
Curry is a generic description used throughout Western culture to describe a variety of dishes from Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Thai or other Southeast Asian cuisines...
recipe database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
. In 1999, eighteen months after registering the domain name, he launched Fark as a way to share interesting news postings with his friends rather than sending them numerous emails. The first story posted was an article about a fighter pilot
Fighter pilot
A fighter pilot is a military aviator trained in air-to-air combat while piloting a fighter aircraft . Fighter pilots undergo specialized training in aerial warfare and dogfighting...
who crashed while attempting to moon another fighter pilot.
During Fark's first year, the site received 50,000 page views and one million the year after. Features such as link submission and forums were added as popularity and participation grew. By January 2008, according to Curtis, the site was averaging an estimated 52 million page views per month from 4 million unique visitors. Fark was officially incorporated in the state of Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
as, "Fark, Inc.", on January 31, 2008.
While most of the story links on the main page are submitted by users and selected for placement based on merit, there was an incident in August 2004 in which Fark was accused of selling preferential placement of story links on the main page. The accusation stemmed from an exchange between Mahalo.com
Mahalo.com
Mahalo.com is a web directory and Internet-based knowledge exchange launched in alpha test in May 2007 by Jason Calacanis...
CEO Jason Calacanis
Jason Calacanis
Jason McCabe Calacanis is an American Internet entrepreneur and blogger. His first company was part of the dot-com era in New York, and his second venture, Weblogs, Inc., capitalized on the growth of blogs before being sold to AOL....
and third party sales employee Gogi Gupta, where Gupta claimed Calacanis could buy an editorial on Fark for $
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
300 to $400. Curtis dismissed the incident as the result of an overenthusiastic sales
Sales
A sale is the act of selling a product or service in return for money or other compensation. It is an act of completion of a commercial activity....
person, and subsequently fired Gupta. Gupta worked for a company called Gupta Media and did not have the authority to speak for Fark, according to Curtis.
Curtis launched Foobies.com in 2006 as a NSFW
NSFW
Not suitable/safe for work , not work-suitable/safe , or not school-suitable is Internet slang or shorthand...
(not safe for work) offshoot of Fark, primarily because advertisers complained about links to female breast
Breast
The breast is the upper ventral region of the torso of a primate, in left and right sides, which in a female contains the mammary gland that secretes milk used to feed infants.Both men and women develop breasts from the same embryological tissues...
s on the main site. Customers could purchase NSFW links through Foobies at the price of $400 per link.
Fark launched Fark TV on January 17, 2007. The first video was a spoof
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
ad for a mock product called "Meth Coffee." In May 2008, Turner Broadcasting announced that it would be folding SuperDeluxe, Fark TV's host site, into the Adult Swim
Adult Swim
Adult Swim is an adult-oriented Cable network that shares channel space with Cartoon Network from 9:00 pm until 6:00 am ET/PT in the United States, and broadcasts in countries such as Australia and New Zealand...
brand, and laying off most of the staff, effectively canceling Fark TV.
Drudge Report
The Drudge Report is a news aggregation website. Run by Matt Drudge with the help of Joseph Curl and Charles Hurt, the site consists mainly of links to stories from the United States and international mainstream media about politics, entertainment, and current events as well as links to many...
. The old design was put into place years ago, over time changes were nailed on to the design like loose shingles on a leaky roof. It was time to reformat and remove a bunch of the clutter while trying to keep the core design intact." The site layout was refined over the next few weeks in accordance with many suggestions.
Curtis published the book, It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News
It's Not News, It's FARK
It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News is the first book byFark.com founder Drew Curtis. It is a critical look at the Mass Media industry and the go-to stories used when there is a lack of hard news to report.-Background:...
in May 2007. The book critically explores the mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
industry and the go-to stories used when there is a lack of hard news to report. It sold 25,000 copies in its first 12 weeks on the market. Despite its initial strong reception, the book only received mild attention from reviewers. Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
gave it a favorable review, although the only major newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
to review it was the Tucson Citizen
Tucson Citizen
The Tucson Citizen was a daily newspaper in Tucson, Arizona. It was founded by Richard C. McCormick with John Wasson as publisher and editor on October 15, 1870 as the Arizona Citizen....
, which only gave it a mini-review.
On November 24, 2009, Fark launched a new partnership with USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, as they became the exclusive host and sponsor of Fark's Geek Page, a collection of technology-related links. This represents the site's first content partnership with a major media brand. Previously, Curtis had signed a sales only deal with Maxim Online
Maxim (magazine)
Maxim is an international men's magazine based in the United Kingdom and known for its pictorials featuring popular actresses, singers, and female models, sometimes pictured dressed, often pictured scantily dressed but not fully nude....
. The page shows aggregated technology news headlines from other news sources with USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
's Tech section branding. Its right column displays technology content from USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
with video clips and a headline widget of USAToday.com
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
's Tech Live and Game Hunters stories.
In January 2011, Fark was sued in Los Angeles Federal Court by Gooseberry Natural Resources, LLC, for allegedly violating US Patent No. 6,370,535, titled, "System and method for structured news release generation and distribution." This patent, awarded in 2002, involves typing text into an administration system, storing it on a server, and publishing it on the Internet. Other defendants sued in the case include Reddit
Reddit
reddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or a text "self" post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down," which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page.Reddit was originally...
, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
, Geeknet
Geeknet
Geeknet, Inc. is a Mountain View, California company that owns several computer tech-related websites and the online retailer ThinkGeek. Formerly known as VA Research, VA Linux Systems, VA Software, and SourceForge, Inc., it was founded in 1993.-VA Research:VA Research was founded in November...
(owner of Slashdot
Slashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
), TechCrunch
TechCrunch
TechCrunch is a web publication that offers technology news and analysis, as well as profiling of startup companies, products, and websites. It was founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, and was first published on June 11, 2005....
, Newsvine
Newsvine
Newsvine is a community-powered, collaborative journalism news website, owned by msnbc.com, which draws content from its users and syndicated content from mainstream sources such as The Associated Press...
, and Yahoo. Drew Curtis argued that Fark does not produce "news releases" or "press releases", as the lawsuit stated, and instead provides a forum for humorous links to stories on other websites. The case was settled in August 2011, for the sum of $0. Curtis later described the entire ordeal as, "a nightmare", saying:
Fark tweaked its site design a little more on June 1, 2011, with the comment, "Fark's redesign will go live at 5PM EST. Heads-up for those of you who missed the other warning threads and need a place to completely lose your mind." Having learned from the controversy caused by the 2007 redesign, Curtis introduced the new site as a preview one week (two weeks for TotalFark users) prior to June 1, to allow users to comment on the changes and provide feedback on where things were broken. The primary reason for the redesigned site is to make it easier to use and more intuitive. The site's tagline was changed from "It's not news, it's FARK" to "We don't make news. We mock it." The music tab was also dropped, due to low usage – content was rolled into the Showbiz or Video tab, where most of the content was already cross-posted anyway. An overhaul to the Fark Mobile Web site was not done at this time, but Curtis did say that small changes would be implemented over time to make the mobile site more consistent with the overall design of the new site.
Administration
Compared to other popular websites, such as Daily KosDaily Kos
Daily Kos is an American political blog that publishes news and opinions from a progressive point of view. It functions as a discussion forum and group blog for a variety of netroots activists, whose efforts are primarily directed toward influencing and strengthening the Democratic Party...
and del.icio.us, Fark is a relatively small operation, run more or less singlehandedly by founder Drew Curtis
Drew Curtis
Drew Curtis is the founder and an administrator of Fark.com, an Internet link dump site. He is also the author of It's Not News, It's FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass off Crap as News in May 2007.-Bio:...
from his home in Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 63rd largest in the US. Known as the "Thoroughbred City" and the "Horse Capital of the World", it is located in the heart of Kentucky's Bluegrass region...
. The site earns revenue from advertising
Internet marketing
Internet marketing, also known as digital marketing, web marketing, online marketing, search marketing or e-marketing, is referred to as the marketing of products or services over the Internet...
and membership in its TotalFark program. Although Curtis won't release official revenue figures, he estimated that, in 2006, the site earned just under $600,000 per year. Its classifieds section alone generates as much as $40,000 per year. Technology writer Mathew Ingram described Fark as "staggeringly successful" and noted the disparity between Fark's revenue and the amount of press given to sites like Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
. Fark has also spoken about its steady, above average CPMs
Cost Per Impression
Cost per impression, often abbreviated to CPI or CPM for Cost per thousand impressions, is a phrase often used in online advertising and marketing related to web traffic. It is used for measuring the worth and cost of a specific e-marketing campaign. This technique is applied with web banners,...
.
Despite a fairly high revenue, Drew takes a yearly salary of just $60,000. The rest of the money goes to the site's legal "war chest" as well as to pay other expenses such as hosting, website design, and forum moderation. Additionally, Fark has been known to turn down advertising that interrupts the user experience such as pop ups
Pop-up ad
Pop-up ads or pop-ups are a form of online advertising on the World Wide Web intended to attract web traffic or capture email addresses. Pop-ups are generally new web browser windows to display advertisements...
or advertisements with sound.
Curtis has used public relations to drive traffic, including interviews every Friday on TechTV
TechTV
TechTV was a 24-hour cable and satellite channel based in San Francisco featuring news and shows about computers, technology, and the Internet. In 2004, it merged with the G4 gaming channel which ultimately dissolved TechTV programming...
for one to one and a half years (ca. 2002–2003) about the three weirdest tech-oriented stories of the week.
Tags
Submitters can give stories several different tagsTag (metadata)
In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...
, such as stupid, interesting, obvious, or dumbass. Tags that say photoshop, audioedit or videoedit are used for threads where digital content is edited for a humorous or artistic effect. In addition, the newsflash tag is used for news which is a matter of important breaking news, and an email is sent to the administrators notifying them that someone has submitted a newsflash.
Due to the large amount of headlines submitted to the site from the state of Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, and because "so many stupid things happen in Florida, it deserved its own Fark tag," the Florida tag was created at the suggestion of users. Similarly, articles discussing Wil Wheaton
Wil Wheaton
Richard William "Wil" Wheaton III is an American actor and writer. As an actor, he is best known for his portrayals of Wesley Crusher on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gordie Lachance in the film Stand by Me and Joey Trotta in Toy Soldiers...
– a Fark user himself – are given the Wheaton tag and articles discussing Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including Joe Dirt, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New...
are occasionally given the Walken tag, though Walken has never participated on Fark.
On August 19, 2008, a new fail tag was introduced, to be used for submitted articles where the subject does something ignorant or when a major gaffe occurs. A new Caturday tag was introduced to in recognition of the caturday
Lolcat
A lolcat is an image combining a photograph of a cat with text intended to contribute humour. The text is often idiosyncratic and grammatically incorrect, and its use in this way is known as "lolspeak" or "kitty pidgin"....
meme
Internet meme
The term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...
on December 21, 2009.
TotalFark
In February 2002, Curtis introduced TotalFark as a subscription serviceSubscription business model
The subscription business model is a business model where a customer must pay a subscription price to have access to the product/service. The model was pioneered by magazines and newspapers, but is now used by many businesses and websites....
, charging $5 per month. By May 2007 there were an estimated 2,000 subscribers, generating $120,000 per year. Subscribers, known collectively as TotalFarkers or TFers, at one time had the privilege of seeing and commenting on all links submitted to the site, as opposed to only those approved for inclusion on the main page. However, as of 2010 an estimated 40% of links submitted to TotalFark are deleted within one minute of being submitted. In a typical 24-hour period, TotalFark's main page includes 1,200 to 1,800 links with associated comment threads, whereas Fark's main page includes only 60 to 80 links from that total.
Subscribers who purchase a 6- or 12-month subscription are also eligible to receive an @ultrafark.com email address. The UltraFark email service is provided through Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
's Gmail
Gmail
Gmail is a free, advertising-supported email service provided by Google. Users may access Gmail as secure webmail, as well via POP3 or IMAP protocols. Gmail was launched as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004 and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007, though...
service.
Farkisms and clichés
Fark's comment threads are often littered with various Farkisms or clichés. These are essentially in-jokeIn-joke
An in-joke, also known as an inside joke or in joke, is a joke whose humour is clear only to people who are in a particular social group, occupation, or other community of common understanding...
s which either originated on Fark or on other sites (such as 4chan
4chan
4chan is an English-language imageboard website. Launched on October 1, 2003, its boards were originally used for the posting of pictures and discussion of manga and anime...
or Something Awful
Something Awful
Something Awful, often abbreviated to SA, is a comedy website housing a variety of content, including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. It was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka in 1999 as a largely personal website, but as it grew, so...
) that have become an integral part of the community culture and used in myriad discussions in the forums, regardless of whether they apply to the topic at hand. Several groups of people seem to take a bit more abuse than others on the site, including PETA
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an American animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, and led by Ingrid Newkirk, its international president. A non-profit corporation with 300 employees and two million members and supporters, it claims to be the largest animal rights...
, Catholic priests
Holy Orders
The term Holy Orders is used by many Christian churches to refer to ordination or to those individuals ordained for a special role or ministry....
, the French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
, and Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
, according to Curtis. The site has also become somewhat well known for including "NSFW" (Not Safe For Work) in the headlines of links that contain images or videos of a sensitive nature, and in 2007, attempted to file a trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
of the phrase. Fark was also involved in organizing the Rickrolling
Rickrolling
Rickrolling is an Internet meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up". The meme is a bait and switch; a person provides a hyperlink seemingly relevant to the topic at hand, but actually leads to Astley's video...
of the New York Mets
New York Mets
The New York Mets are a professional baseball team based in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York. They belong to Major League Baseball's National League East Division. One of baseball's first expansion teams, the Mets were founded in 1962 to replace New York's departed National League...
in April 2008, when they encouraged readers to vote for Rick Astley
Rick Astley
Richard Paul "Rick" Astley is an English singer-songwriter, musician, and radio personality. He is known for his 1987 song, "Never Gonna Give You Up", which was a #1 hit single in 25 countries...
's Never Gonna Give You Up
Never Gonna Give You Up
A group of London dance producers, called The Rickrollerz made a house music cover version of "Never Gonna Give You Up" on that day, and in honor of that event....
as the song to be played during every home game of the 2008 season.
One particularly notable Farkism involves the acronym UFIA (Unsolicited Finger In Anus), which became a cliché after an article making the main page misquoted a judge using the line. UFIA was prominently used again in February 2005, when Drew Curtis purchased the naming rights to the Fleet Center (now TD Garden) in Boston, Massachusetts for the single day of February 28, 2005. The consensus choice of Fark's readers was that it should be re-dubbed the "Fark.com UFIA Center". In the end, however, Boston Garden
Boston Garden
The Boston Garden was an arena in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Designed by boxing promoter Tex Rickard, who also built the third iteration of New York's Madison Square Garden, it opened on November 17, 1928 as "Boston Madison Square Garden" and outlived its original namesake by some 30 years...
was chosen as the name due to obscenity
Obscenity
An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...
concerns. In April 2006, a Fark member convinced the Tennessee Department of Transportation
Tennessee Department of Transportation
The Tennessee Department of Transportation is a multimodal agency with statewide responsibilities in aviation, public transit, waterways and railroads...
to erect an Adopt a Highway
Adopt a Highway
The Adopt-a-Highway program, also known as Sponsor-a-Highway , is a promotional campaign undertaken by U.S. states, Provinces and Territories of Canada, and national governments outside North America to encourage volunteers to keep a section of a highway free from litter...
sign in the name of UFIA on the two miles of State Route 63 west of the intersection of SR 63 and U.S. Route 25E
U.S. Route 25E
U.S. Route 25E is the eastern branch of U.S. Route 25 from Newport, Tennessee, where US 25 splits into US 25E and US 25W, to North Corbin, Kentucky, where the two highways rejoin...
. The Department required a definition of UFIA, which was explained as, “Uniting Friends in America.” The sign remained up for a few days, but was ultimately removed once authorities were informed of the origins of the acronym.
Another popular Farkism involves KABC-TV
KABC-TV
KABC-TV, channel 7, is an owned-and-operated television station of the Walt Disney Company-owned American Broadcasting Company, licensed to Los Angeles, California. KABC-TV's studios are located in Glendale, California...
Consumer Specialist Ric Romero
Ric Romero
Ric Romero is the consumer reporter for KABC, a television station in the U.S. city of Los Angeles.Born in Los Angeles, Romero graduated from San José State University with a degree in Broadcasting and Business and a minor in Theatre Arts...
, which began on October 19, 2005, when he wrote a news story on the "new" internet phenomenon of blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
ging. The story was then picked up by Fark, where he was ridiculed for posting a story about something that many people did not consider "news" and was actually quite obvious. Over the course of the next several years, he became somewhat of a meme
Internet meme
The term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...
on the site, as Farkers would post links to his stories, along with his photo, and a brief caption stating something obvious that everyone already knew. On December 7, 2009, Drew Curtis discovered his Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
fan page, which led Ric to ask the Farkers that joined his new Facebook page to donate to the Spark of Love Toy Drive, which subsequently resulted in 582 online donations totaling $13,659.20 by December 16, 2009. Romero thanked the Fark community on the news for their donations, and recognized his status as a Farkism, also reporting the "breaking news" that "Water is Wet."
Photoshop contests
The site features regular Photoshop contestPhotoshop contest
A Photoshop contest, or sometimes photochop contest, is an online game, in which a website or user of an Internet forum will post a starting image — usually a photograph — and ask others to manipulate the image using some kind of graphics editing software, such as Photoshop, Corel...
s, in which users use a graphical editing program (such as Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
, from which the contest draws its name) to manipulate an image provided by the creator of the contest. A similar site, Something Awful
Something Awful
Something Awful, often abbreviated to SA, is a comedy website housing a variety of content, including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. It was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka in 1999 as a largely personal website, but as it grew, so...
, sponsors Photoshop Phriday contests. The image is usually manipulated for humorous effect, but can also be edited to create an aesthetically pleasing image or to showcase a poster's image manipulation skill, which is then voted on by others in the forum. The contests satisfy our desire for to see things of an incongruous, sophomoric or sexual nature, such as that pioneered by P.T. Barnum in the 19th century with his "mermaid woman" using the head of a monkey
Monkey
A monkey is a primate, either an Old World monkey or a New World monkey. There are about 260 known living species of monkey. Many are arboreal, although there are species that live primarily on the ground, such as baboons. Monkeys are generally considered to be intelligent. Unlike apes, monkeys...
stitched onto the body of a fish.
Fark Parties
At periodic intervals throughout the year, Fark Parties are organized, usually in conjunction with the travels of Curtis. The practice began in 1999, when Curtis was doing some database consulting in Spartanburg, South CarolinaSpartanburg, South Carolina
thgSpartanburg is the largest city in and the county seat of Spartanburg County, South Carolina, United States. It is the second-largest city of the three primary cities in the Upstate region of South Carolina, and is located northwest of Columbia, west of Charlotte, and about northeast of...
. Staying in a hotel with nothing to do, he posted a note up on the site asking anybody who lived in the area to email him if they wanted to join him for a beer.
FarkIt
"FarkIt" or "Fark This" is a method of submitting information that increases its chances of being seen on the Fark web site. A FarkIt button appears on a web site, and links submitted through this button go to a different database. The Fark web site gives priority to submissions from sites that clearly show the button. This might mean that the URL of a particular article will be that of the site showing the button, rather than one which does not, even if the site without the button was the first from which the given article was submitted.Traffic and users
As of June 2009, the site receives approximately four million unique visitors per month, which puts it in the top 100 of English language websites. Fark's Alexa ratingAlexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the Web site where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's Web traffic...
is 2,310, with the average user spending 5.8 minutes per day on the site and 5,337 sites linking in. 67.2% of users originate from the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The site receives approximately 2,000 story submissions per day from users, and approximately 50 of them are displayed on the main page of the site, or "green-lighted". Subscribers to the subscription TotalFark service, are able to view all 2,000 submissions per day for a $5 per month fee. There are around 500,000 user accounts on the site (including both TotalFark as well as unpaid accounts), although only about 5% actually read comments, and only 1% actually post in the forums. Greenlit links can generate upwards of 300,000 page views in one month for the recipient, which is such an enormous amount of traffic
Web traffic
Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. It is a large portion of Internet traffic. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit...
that smaller websites are often "farked
Slashdot effect
The Slashdot effect, also known as slashdotting, occurs when a popular website links to a smaller site, causing a massive increase in traffic. This overloads the smaller site, causing it to slow down or even temporarily close. The name stems from the huge influx of web traffic that results from...
", meaning that their servers
Web server
Web server can refer to either the hardware or the software that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet....
have crashed.
Normally, in the absence of serious news, comments in the forums on the site tend to be of a more sophomoric nature, consisting primarily of sex jokes and comments about various bodily functions. However, during major events such as the September 11 attacks or the Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
aftermath, usage spikes and the site can actually be seen as a more serious outlet for news. Some users can also contribute greatly to reporting actual events; for instance, the citizen journalism
Citizen journalism
Citizen journalism is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information...
of the events during the 2009 Iranian election protests
2009 Iranian election protests
Protests following the 2009 Iranian presidential election against the disputed victory of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and in support of opposition candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi occurred in major cities in Iran and around the world starting June 13, 2009...
was recognized by several major media outlets. In response to this coverage, Drew Curtis placed a green band on the letter "K" in the site's logo at the top of the page, to show support for Mir-Hossein Mousavi
Mir-Hossein Mousavi
Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh is an Iranian reformist politician, artist and architect who served as the seventy-ninth and last Prime Minister of Iran from 1981 to 1989. He was a Reformist candidate for the 2009 presidential election and eventually the leader of the opposition in the post-election...
.
In a June 2009 interview, Curtis said that almost all traffic coming from the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
was from spammers, so he blocked both countries from the site.
Publicity
Business 2.0
Business 2.0 was a monthly magazine publication founded by magazine entrepreneur Chris Anderson, Mark Gross, and journalist James Daly in order to chronicle the rise of the "New Economy"...
magazine as part of the feature story about successful websites. In 2007 and 2009, Fark was referenced on the game show Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
Griffin's first conception of the game used a board comprising ten categories with ten clues each, but after finding that this board could not be shown on camera easily, he reduced it to two rounds of thirty clues each, with five clues in each of six categories...
, with a category entitled "Fark.com Headlines." The site is also frequently used as a humorous source for news by many radio stations, as well as late night comedy shows. Although much to Drew Curtis' dismay, it is very rarely cited as a source for many of these stories.
Several celebrities have also stated that they either checked the website regularly or participated in its discussion forums using an account. Some of these celebrities include Alan Colmes
Alan Colmes
Alan Samuel Colmes is an American radio/television host, liberal political commentator for the Fox News Channel, and blogger. He is the host of The Alan Colmes Show, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show distributed by Fox News Radio that also airs throughout the United States on Fox News Talk...
of Fox News, Mythbusters
MythBusters
MythBusters is a science entertainment TV program created and produced by Beyond Television Productions for the Discovery Channel. The series is screened by numerous international broadcasters, including Discovery Channel Australia, Discovery Channel Latin America, Discovery Channel Canada, Quest...
co-host Adam Savage
Adam Savage
Adam Whitney Savage is an American industrial design and special effects designer/fabricator, actor, educator, and co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters. His model work has appeared in major films, including Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones and The Matrix...
, science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
author John Scalzi
John Scalzi
John Michael Scalzi II is an American author and online writer, and president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his Hugo Award-nominated science fiction novel Old Man's War, released by Tor Books in January 2005, and for his blog , at which he has written...
, and actor Wil Wheaton
Wil Wheaton
Richard William "Wil" Wheaton III is an American actor and writer. As an actor, he is best known for his portrayals of Wesley Crusher on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gordie Lachance in the film Stand by Me and Joey Trotta in Toy Soldiers...
.
See also
- News aggregator
- DiggDiggDigg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
- RedditRedditreddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or a text "self" post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down," which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page.Reddit was originally...
- SlashdotSlashdotSlashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
- Something AwfulSomething AwfulSomething Awful, often abbreviated to SA, is a comedy website housing a variety of content, including blog entries, forums, feature articles, digitally edited pictures, and humorous media reviews. It was created by Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka in 1999 as a largely personal website, but as it grew, so...
- Worth1000Worth1000Worth1000 is an image manipulation and contest website. Worth1000 opened on January 1, 2002 and hosts over 340,000 unique images made in theme contests such as "Rejected Transformers", "Invisible World", and "Stupid Protests". In mid-2003, Worth1000 began hosting similar competitions for...
External links
- FARK.ru – Independently run Russian language site modeled after FARK.com
- Farktography – site for Fark photography (not Photoshop) contests
- Fark Photoshop Scrutinizer – Fark Photoshop contest results and statistics