Diary Of A Farker
by Mark on 1/12/2005 (22)
| "Whoaa! Lame!...Sappy!...Sucks!....LAME!...WHOAAAAA!!!" | | Egon Zigga hammered the "F" key repeatedly. Picking up his computer keyboard like a partially functional etch-and-sketch, Zigga slam hammered it down on his desk, sending tiny dehydrated bits of french fries and jalapeno nacho crispers flying like crunchy edible confetti.
300lb. telephone support reps, Taco Bell and computers are a deadly, disfunctional mix.
Zigga, a.k.a "Mr. Nuts", had a problem. One of the legions of www.fark.com fans, known as "Farkers", Zigga had a bone to pick with one of the submissions posted there.
In order to understand Zigga's rage, one must first understand www.fark.com.
As the internet evolved, sometime around 1996, wider bandwidth, faster servers, routers, and more powerfull home computers, allowed 'point and click' fast data downloads from server to remote client to become a reality. As the web opened up, and home PC's became more numerous than TV's, virtually the entire business, entertainment and network news media industries, sniffing potential profit, flocked to the web to get their piece of the competitive online pie.
Somewhere along the way, some enterprising webmaster came to the (correct) and quite ingenius realization that Internet users, known as "surfers", would jump to a have a readily compiled list of cool news stories and links at their immediate disposal, the hosting page providing active URL's a mouse click away, in return turning page hits into advertising dollars, as a few pennies are paid for each hit on an ad, and charging varying rates (depending on the page's traffic) for rotating ad space and banners.
It was all about $$$
Predictably, most of these 'listings pages' like to post links to stories and media that is edgy and emotionally or sexually hot. After all, sex and dirt sells. What's new about that realization? In the digital age, sex and dirt gets you hits, and mo' hits mean mo' $$$
Don't expect to find fine literature over here. Mark Twain, Robert Browning, Gertrud Stein, Kurt Vonnegut jr...none would stand a chance in e-mail hell of getting their stories posted in hot-links land. The majority of stories posted are highly vulgar and violent in nature, in order to capture a few precious moments - and a few precious ad clicks- of a web surfers attention before they meander off onto their private, well worn rut of 'favorite links', just like flashy Lite Beer commercials grab us for 30 seconds on TV.
One of the queerly unexpected developments to arise with pages like King Fark, and its baby clones, Madville, Alldumb, Wellplayed.net, Snikksnakk, Dave's Daily et. al., is the rise of loyal 'communities', or regular page visitors who 'register' on their respective favorite page, and can submit active links or leave comments on links that others have posted.
These local communities can become oddly tight knit, Bohemian, territorial and exclusive.
A small percentage of posted comments are favorable, but most are more often derogatory and vicious, screaming "Lame!", "Sucks!" "Sappy", or more often, "Total Shit!"
*Yawn*. Predictable. Everybody's a critic, so why not play it for all it's worth?
By giving the illusion of "voice" to the grumbling and untalented , the page gets more hits, draws in more submissions, and makes more money for the webmaster.
Nice, tight, neat, and Freudian as hell.
Laughing diabolically, Egon Zigga comment hammered a satire post with a Frenchman's wave and keenly checked his page submission score.
"If you're go
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