FarkFrom WhatPort80  Fark.com (1999-2007) was a news and "humor" site with famous Photoshop competitions. Fark is perhaps more famous for stealing memes from other web sites and claiming them as their own. Fark died on April 25th, 2007 with the introduction of the worst site redesign in internet history. The format of Fark was: registered users are invited to submit weird news stories to the site in the hopes of getting the "greenlight". Approved articles ended up on the Main Page (or the tabs, which noone cares about), and the submitter got to feel a little unwarranted self-importance. The vast majority of "user-submitted" articles are actually pre-approved from a list compiled that day by Fark's editors (Drew and his unpaid interns). Think of it as writing a letter to the editor: would a newspaper print your letter? No they wouldn't. Fark became less and less a source of wacky news stories and moved mainstream, and on September 11th, 2001 they switched formats completely and only supplied breaking news coverage of the attacks. The next day, though, they switched back to the normal fart jokes and Boobies links. Fark wants to make you feel it's a place to go to and appear intellectual by chatting about current events, when you really want to defend communism, drug use, or perfectly reasonable religions like the Church of the SubGenius, all while insisting Christians are crazy and the epitome of what is wrong with the world. Drew made a study of the media, and eventually wrote a book blasting the media for trying to make money by printing tabloids full of nonsense of no consequence. No one really knows if he finds Fark's successful application of everything he apparently loathes about the media amusing, horrifying, or simply a great way to do even less journalism than tabloids do and still manage to rake in the cash. ForumsIf the IMDb forums are where your brain goes to die, the Fark Forums are Hell. Every other comment is an old meme that probably originated at Something Awful or 4chan which they self-referentially refer to as "Fark Cliches". The list of known stolen Cliches includes:
The only "cliche" that is known to have originated in the Fark Forums is Magua. And while they didn't technically create the phrase Unsolicited Finger in the Anus, they are wholly responsible for popularizing it. An especially popular forum topic is wild speculation over whether various attractive people are anorexic, and whether "eating a sammich" would cure the affliction. This classic battle pits fat girls and the men who love them against everyone else. In order to keep things fresh at Fark, every news article title ends with the phrase "hilarity ensues" because it's so incredibly funny and random! HierarchyDrewDrew Curtis is in charge of Fark (kind of like GV for us or Your Mom for you]). That's why the title of every page says "Drew Curtis Presents: Drew Curtis' FARK.com (A Drew Curtis Production)". Drew is a fat scary alcoholic homosexual. AdminsThese are the people who pick the links. ModeratorsThese are TotalFarkersThe site is noted for its large collection of idiots called TotalFarkers, who pay $5 a month to have their special main page of Fark spammed with all the thousands of crappy articles that don't get posted because they suck that much. The only redeeming qualities for paying for Fark are the direct access to the hundreds of Boobies links submitted every day and the sense of e-friendship they feel when they gang up on an idiot for submitting something stupid. FarkersCalled "liters" (pronounced lighters) by everyone else, these people are the bottom of the barrel. The one good thing about them is their willingness to be trolled. Other than that, trying to talk to them is like trying to explain to Zen444 how wikis work. Some good trolling subjects include: abortion, circumcision, W's effectiveness as a leader in the 21st Century, and Furries. Notable FarkersBesides Curtis, several well known people have been known to hang out on Fark, including Wesley Crusher and (allegedly) that guy from that one episode of Full House. Also this one time Christopher Walken was in Starbucks and he almost looked at a laptop that was showing Fark. But he didn't. Non-Notable FarkersHowever, Fark is 99.9999999% composed of complete nobodies, including
Drama-Generating TechniquesYou can troll Fark in the following ways:
Drew decides to change the layout and anally invade it's usersOn 26-4-2007, nevar forget, in an attempt to tell all the users (including the totalfark users) they don't matter they decided to change the layout completely, In the same trend as Something awful the layout looks all crappy now and the site is screwed beyond repair. It generated lots of drama amongst the Fark users. On the other hand, the Fark powers that be are probably getting more dough from the advertisers, who "don't like that crap". It also spawned the creation of a few attempts at replacements which try to be like Fark except not all stupid, but so far teh winnar seems to be banniNation, where many of the pillars of the former Fark community go once they get sick enough of all the crap going on at Fark. All this drama has also engendered some further drama at a certain Wiki site we all know and despise. OMG HackedSometime around 2007, someone tried to hack Fark after completing all the coursework for Computer Science III. Fox News "new media manager" Darrell Phillips [2], of Fox13 Memphis, is believed to have sent links to malicious software to Fark Admins and Moderators in an attempt to learn their passwords and gain access to the Fark source code. At present Fark has subpoenaed some ISPs but has not brought a lawsuit against Fox13. This can only mean that the admins are going for vigilante justice. "Technology Gossip Blog" Valleywag has a complete timeline of the events. Pwning WordsWith the site still continuing in a vegetative state, Drew Curtis showed his total greed in late 2007 by claiming that he pwns the abbreviation NSFW. The US Patents and Trademarks Office has it under consideration. Fail and hatred ensue. Farking A(lex Trebek)In a desperate attempt to get someone to keep looking at the site, Fark pulled this out of their collective butts. External LinksStuff from the Site
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