Dan Crowley - 505 Unbelievably Stupid Webpages

2nd Edition

DAN CROWLEY

Copyright 2007 by Dan Crowley

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ISBN 13: 978-1-4022-1090-7
ISBN 10: 1-4022-1090-6

Previous edition cataloged as follows:

Crowley, Dan.

505 unbelievably stupid Web pages / by Dan Crowley.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-4022-0142-7 (alk. paper)

1. Web sitesDirectories. 2. Internet addressesDirectories. 3. TriviaComputer network resources Directories. I. Title: Five hundred and five unbelievably stupid Web pages. II. Title.

ZA4225.C76 2003

025.04dc21

2003005077

Printed and bound in the United States of America

VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my family, living and gone

What if I told you that there was a web page, somewhere out there on the vast world known as the Internet, dedicated to the worship of an all-powerful deity known as the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

There is such a page.

What if I told you that another web page warns people of the danger of the Nega Scooby Doo Gang, a group that is comprised of the evil alternates of the lovable Scooby Doo characters?

It exists. Im not kidding.

The Internet has become a great source of information. You can find a concert schedule for your favorite band or you can book a flight to the Caribbean. You can even go head to head with someone on the other side of the world in a game of cards or chess.

However, there are many web pages on the Internet that seem to have no use at all. One wonders why people would dedicate themselves to such worthless causes.

There is a game I play on Google, called Googlewhacking. Heres how it works: you go to www.google.com and type in a two-word phrase for something you know isnt going to get many responses, if any. An example would be Swedish rappers. When I was working on the first edition of this book back in 2003, a search for Swedish rappers turned up 1,820 matches. If you think thats amazing, try searching today. Youll get a mind-boggling 182,000 matchesone hundred times more than four years ago! Theres even an article on Wikipedia (a popular online encyclopedia with tons of information on almost anything) about Swedish hip-hop, with a list of several dozen artists!

Surprised? You should be. I, for one, have never heard of, much less listened to, a Swedish rapper. And yet, it seems to be an entire sub-genre of music, and you can learn all about it on the Internet. And, like the list of stupid things Paris Hilton has done, it keeps growing and growing.

If you look harder, youll find web pages that display how stupid some people can be. 101 Uses for AOL Disks is another one of my favorites. It shows you some actual uses for the countless America Online CDs that appear in your mailbox and every electronics store, attempting to add members to the AOL ranks. (Hey, AOL, maybe you should focus more on marketing to people who actually want to use your product.)

The more I looked, the more I became fascinated with how many unusual, bizarre, and downright idiotic web pages there are. In addition, there are many serious sites that are unintentionally funny. So I decided to dedicate my time to finding these web pages and giving them some much-needed attention. Deserved, maybe not, but needed, yes. Most were meant to give someone a laugh, after all. Why shouldnt they get attention?

Now that Ive shown you some humorous examples, its time for you to go off and do some fun web-surfing of your own. Throughout the book, I include descriptions of the sites as well as my own comments. I have given each site an abnormality rating, a stupidity rating, and an entertainment rating. Each is rated on a scale of 1 to 10, (1 being the least abnormal/stupid/entertaining, 10 being the most). So, ladies and gentlemen, join me as we count down 505 Unbelievably Stupid Web Pages, in no particular order. Enjoy!

These websites may or may not exist once you go to look for them. The fluid nature of the Web dictates that I cannot guarantee that the sites will be in service at the time of publication. I have done my best to make sure that most are current as of this writing. Those sites that have gone to Internet Heaven (or Internet Hell, as the case may be) are still included as a record of their incredibly pathetic existence and a timeless tribute to their extreme stupidity and uselessness.

If the address listed in the book does not work, try searching for the site using a search engine such as Google, as the site may have changed its address since the printing of the book. Sites such as Google and the Way Back Machine (www.archive.org) also have cached images of websites, so that you can view what a website looked like even if it no longer exists. Please also visit www.stupidwebpages.com to receive updates of which sites are dead and which sites have changed addresses.

Love staplers? Well, then, this is the page for you.

This page features a gallery of stapler models from different years, including comments on how they work, as if they need any. The 1968 Swingline, the Drexel Odyssey, and the Max Hong Kong Booklet Stapler are just a few of the models. They also have an FAQ on the mechanics of staplers and questions on how you can find those annoying things when they get lost. Letters from outsiders having stapler problems or other queries are encouraged, as they post these in a letters section (one letter was trying to make these people realize how moronic the idea of a stapler web page is, but theyd have none of it). They have an entire section devoted to the surprisingly many times theyve been noticed by the media, along with comments theyve received. Theyre currently working on a section that features staplers that appeared in movies, and finally, the ultimate in stupidity for this page: Stapler Poetry.

COMMENTS: Ive never realized how much attention people can put into such a mundane, inanimate object. Well, I guess now I know that theres much more to staplers than I realized. These people have gone to the point where they love staplers to death. And I thought it was just an office tool.