The Best Page in the Universe: Difference between revisions
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Following the [[Hurricane Katrina]] disaster, Maddox asked for donations in the form of store purchases and collected over $3000.<ref>[http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=katrina Behold: the greatest humanitarian in the history of earth<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> |
Following the [[Hurricane Katrina]] disaster, Maddox asked for donations in the form of store purchases and collected over $3000.<ref>[http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=katrina Behold: the greatest humanitarian in the history of earth<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> |
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On [[August 29]], [[ |
On [[August 29]], [[2008]], "The Best Page in the Universe" celebrated "11 years of literary genius." |
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==Content== |
==Content== |
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Revision as of 23:55, 22 September 2008
Type of site | Satire Fratire |
|---|---|
| Owner | Maddox |
| Created by | Maddox |
| URL | http://maddox.xmission.com/ |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | None |
The Best Page in the Universe is a personal satirical humor website created by George Ouzounian, better known as Maddox, from Salt Lake City, Utah. Launched in 1997 without any high expectations, the website became highly popular by word of mouth; as of July 1, 2008, Xmission.com, which hosts The Best Page in the Universe, had an Alexa rank of 6,525[1] and has had more than 220 million visits. TheBestPageInTheUniverse.net, which works as an alternative domain for Maddox' website, had an Alexa rank of 12,830.[2]
History
"The Best Page in the Universe" originated from a text document that Maddox wrote in 1996[3] which listed fifty things that "pissed him off." He gave the list to several people on EFnet's #codes, and the positive response led him to create the website.[4]
Maddox decided to name his site "The Best Page in the Universe" despite his knowledge that Yahoo! blocked sites with the phrase "the best" in the title from inclusion in its search engine.[5]
Initially, between 1998 and 1999, Maddox's pages were short and posted several times per month. As updates became less frequent, articles became longer. Presently, Maddox writes fewer than a dozen articles annually; he has made light of this by promising to regularly update "never."
Recently, some of Maddox's articles have been translated into foreign languages, such as "Ben Stiller Should Star in Every Movie" and "If You're Too Much of an Impressionable Idiot to Watch Sideways, Then Don't"[6]
Following the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Maddox asked for donations in the form of store purchases and collected over $3000.[7]
On August 29, 2008, "The Best Page in the Universe" celebrated "11 years of literary genius."
Content
The majority of Maddox's articles are satirical, often focusing on society and pop culture, although he does occasionally write a nonsensical page with no intentions other than entertainment. Several articles deal with masculinity and enthusiastically endorse chauvinism and dislike towards children, senior citizens, women's rights activists, vegetarians, environmentalists, hippies, celebrities and personalities, George W. Bush, Mac users, goths and jocks.
Many of Maddox's articles include illustrations to portray a point. Most of the pictures on his website were drawn by Maddox with Microsoft Paint, and occasionally Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, and other graphics manipulation software. Past images include drawings of elderly people being fired to the Sun, hippies being killed, Maddox's testicles (drawn larger than a basketball).
Maddox also maintains a section in which he criticizes hate mail his website has generated. When posting his replies he breaks the e-mail down and ridicules points which use fallacious logic and also corrects linguistic errors. He also runs an online store which sells merchandise such as stickers and apparel that bear phrases used in his articles.[8]
Format
The website's layout is minimalistic primarily in order to save on bandwidth costs, though Maddox also wishes to protest many contemporary websites which contain "fancy HTML" but lack in substantial content. He uses large, light-colored text against a black background to reduce strain on the eyes and has compared reading black text on a white background to "staring at a light bulb."[4]
The page is headed with an image of Maddox's face superimposed over a bust of Che Guevara. In the image, he is wearing an eye patch and donning a beret emblazoned with the Jolly Roger. Maddox uses this image as a parody of the revolutionary icon, and does not proclaim to be either a socialist or communist, saying that Che Guevara is remembered as "Che the revolutionary," not "Che the pinko."[4] Instead, he often proclaims himself to be a pirate, and typically portrays himself as such in his articles and artwork.
Maddox deliberately keeps his site free of advertisements. He does not specifically ask for donations from his readers, though he does accept them.[9] In an article regarding plagiarism of his material, Maddox wrote, "The reason this site doesn't have advertisements on it is because I want to say whatever I want without having to worry about offending advertisers."
Hidden pages
Maddox's website is also known to contain several "hidden pages," many of which are unfinished works or first drafts of articles that were moved around. Maddox Addicts, a fan site of Maddox, posted a large list of them.[10]
Other media
Maddox has shifted the website's focus to comics and books, including The Alphabet of Manliness, published in June 2006, and updates started coming in less frequently than before. Updates to his site have become so infrequent that their non-appearance has become an ongoing joke.
He recently launched a competition for people to send him cartoons about himself or his website, most of which are attacks about emails for "more updates." Later, he parodied this himself by stating that now that he's finished with the comic book, he'd be able to "Not update the site more regularly." Entries so far include a depiction of Maddox leaping out of a computer monitor and smashing two fans' faces together and an animated cartoon of a boy checking the website for new content only to find a cartoon of himself that he had posted ten seconds earlier.[11][12][13]
Controversy
Blocking
According to Maddox, countries and some internet filtering products have banned the website. On January 8, 2004, the United Arab Emirates blocked the website.[14][citation needed] Maddox said that his website has been filtered and banned on Websense, Lexmark, and the Department of Defense. He has criticized many of them by saying such things as "forget about all the gang bang, bukkake and rape sites your filters miss — satire sites should be your top priority." He has also stated they block health and education sites.[15] He states that he blocked Websense computers from accessing his website in response to Websense filtering his, claiming that the internet service deserves to "[be] on the receiving end of [its] self-appointed judicial bullshit for [once]," as it had lost credibility with end-users.[16]
Mothers Against Maddox
A self-described concerned mother named Beth Robbins founded a website called Mothers Against Maddox[17] in late 2004. The website's slogan is "Help Us Fight and Finally Shut Down the Most Hateful Site on the Internet" and serves as a forum to organise shutting down the Xmission.com website with a petition-backed court order.[18] When Maddox wrote about it in the aforementioned Websense article, including a link to the original GeoCities.com website, Mothers Against Maddox was inundated with visitors and repeatedly exceeded its bandwidth limit. In response, Maddox hosted a mirror in order for fans of his writing to view it without disrupting the Mothers Against Maddox website's hosting arrangement.[19] Shortly after drafting the petition, Robbins decided to make a digitalized copy available on the website PetitionOnline.com. Fans promptly flooded the petition, many posting vulgar comments to vindicate his emotive appeal to the youth demographic. Maddox said that he signed the petition, as "nobody gives a shit." The petition was eventually deactivated.[20]
Maddox states that he received emails with similar viewpoints as expressed by Mothers Against Maddox. Such messages often contain sentences expressing a dislike for his viewpoints and/or that his site is a bad influence on their children. Maddox responded by saying that "if [his] site offends people, they should not read it" and "it's not my job to be your children's guardian."
On October 27, 2007 CNN ran a story about Mothers Against Drunk Driving asking another organization, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, to cease using "Mothers Against" in the name of their organization. CNN went on to cite various other organizations that use "Mothers Against" in their name with Mothers Against Maddox being one of its examples.[21]
However, critics have argued that Maddox himself created MaM as a publicity stunt. They claim the writing style, HTML markup, and images are uncannily similar to Maddox's own Web site.[citation needed]
References
- ^ Maddox.xmission.com ranking on Alexa.com
- ^ Thebestpageintheuniverse.net's rating on Alexa.com
- ^ "It's a man's world." Salon
- ^ a b c Maddox. "The Best Page in the Universe: FAQ"
- ^ Maddox. "100 million faces rocked". The Best Page in the Universe. March 18, 2005.
- ^ Maddox. "If you're too much of an impressionable idiot to watch "Sideways," then don't." The Best Page in the Universe. February 17, 2005.
- ^ Behold: the greatest humanitarian in the history of earth
- ^ Maddox. The Best Store in the Universe.
- ^ The Best Page In The Universe: FAQ
- ^ "Maddox Addicts :: Secrets". Maddox Addicts
- ^ Maddox. "Holy shit! I'm writing a book!". February 19, 2005. The Best Page in the Universe. (Archive.org).
- ^ Kiyan, Randy. "Week of 11/01/05". The Best Page in the Universe. November 1, 2005.
- ^ Horus. "Weekly Submission". The Best Page in the Universe. November 2005.
- ^ Maddox referencing his ban in the United Arab Emirates
- ^ Maddox. "If you work for Websense, you aren't reading this." The Best Page in the Universe. September 13, 2004
- ^ "[Try] being on the receiving end of your self-appointed judicial bullshit for a change, you may disagree with this label and want to submit an appeal to change your categorization... Upon receiving your request, I will give it a passing glance and shrug it off lightly, regardless of the fact that the number of requests to change your status to something else may outweigh the number of requests to keep it the same."
- ^ Mothers Against Maddox
- ^ "The Best Page in the Universe a side-splitting romp through sarcasm and vulgarity." Gateway.
- ^ Maddox mirror of the Mothers Against Maddox page
- ^ The no Maddox patition at Patitiononline.com
- ^ "CNN Article - Group mad at MADD". Retrieved 2007-10-27.
External links
