Suck.com
 |
suck.com's logo |
Suck.com was one of the earliest ad-supported content sites on the
Internet. It featured daily editorial content on a wide variety of topics, including
politics and
pop-culture and was targeted at
Generation X. Their tagline, and
mascots, were "A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun".
Suck.com was founded in
1995 by writer
Joey Anuff and editor
Carl Steadman who created original daily commentary with a satiric edge. The witty writing was accentuated by the unique artistic stylings of cartoonist
Terry Colon. In
1996, they brought on the writing talent of
Heather Havrilesky, who provided the sarcastic voice of her alter ego
Polly Esther in their most popular column
Filler.
In
1997, Suck published a compilation of their most popular essays in
Suck: Worst-Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising and the Internet (ISBN 1888869275).
Other than the distinctive artwork of Terry Colon, the site also had many other memorable characteristics that tied their daily articles together. The main text of each article was restricted to a table only 200 pixels wide. Most articles would feature multiple unexplained links, foreshadowing the same technique in modern
weblogs.
*Hit & Run — A link-driven summary of recent events
*Filler — A weekly self-deprecating look at cultural pretension and dating in post-modern times
 |
Suck's final article "Gone Fishin'", originally published June 8, 2001 |
In July
2000, following a sharp downturn in Internet investment, suck.com merged with pop-culture rag
Feed Magazine to create
Automatic Media. Their concept was to streamline their operations and collaborate on boutique operations with low staffing costs. Their joint project
Plastic.com was founded with only 4 staffed employees. Despite the faithful cult following, and a combined reader base of over 1 million, Automatic Media folded in June
2001. On
June 8, 2001, Suck.com declared that they were "Gone Fishing" indefinitely, and the site ceased to publish new content.
Staff
*
Carl Steadman, co-founder, writer, and editor, is now the owner of
plastic.com.
*
Joey Anuff, co-founder, writer and editor, is an author and co-wrote the book
Dumb Money. He is now a producer at
VH-1.
*
Terry Colon was the site's full-time illustrator from 1997 until 2001. He now contributes illustrations to publications including
TIME*
Heather Havrilesky, writer of
Filler, Suck's most beloved feature, is now a popular featured columnist at
Salon's
Arts & Entertainment section. She also writes and takes letters at the
Rabbit Blog.
*
Tim Cavanaugh (
BarTel D'Arcy) was Suck's editor in chief from 1998 to 2001. He is now the web editor of
Reason and sporadically runs a
webzine called
The Simpleton.
*
Ana Marie Cox, executive editor, (who wrote as Ann O'Tate) was later the writer of popular
Washington D.C. based
blog Wonkette.
*
Owen Thomas, copy editor, is now chief of reporters at
Business 2.0.
Contributors
*
Greg Beato (St. Huck) writes and edits Soundbitten.com. [
1].
*
Chris Bray (who wrote as
Ambrose Beers) joined the
Army.
As of June
2005, he is stationed in
Iraq.
*
Rogers Cadenhead (
CGI Joe) runs a blog,
Workbench, and a blog host,
Buzzword.com; he has also published programming books. He also administers humor site
Cruel.com.
*
Michael Gerber (
Bay B. Food) wrote a parody of
Harry Potter called
Barry Trotter.
*
Nick Gillespie (Mr. Mxyzptlk) is editor-in-chief of
Reason.
*
Ben Godar (
Godar) attends
Chapman University film school.
*
Greg Knauss (
An Entirely Other Greg) continues his long-form blog
An Entirely Other Day and works in the software industry.
*
Tom Spurgeon runs the
comic book news site
The Comics Reporter.
* The name of the site
suck.com was chosen for its possibly offensive connotations, and is probably also meant to poke fun at the fact that questionably offensive domain names were approved only at the discretion of
Network Solutions, who controlled the
InterNIC system for the distribution of domain names before
ICANN took over that authority.
#
Suck.com, Gone for Good?.
waxy.org. URL accessed on
December 30,
2005.
*
sucksnet.com*
suck.com*
Suck.com's final article, originally posted on June 8, 2001*
A Wired magazine feature by Josh Quittner*
A News.com article on Suck*
A Salon.com article on Suck*
A USA Today article on Suck*
The Big Fish A history of Suck.com
