Fark.com
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Fark_screenshot.jpg
Fark.com is a popular community website allowing users to comment on a daily batch of news articles and notable websites, which users classify as "Stupid," "Interesting," "Obvious," "Strange," "Spiffy," "Boobies" (pornography featuring females), "Weeners" (pornography featuring males), and so on. Most links are submitted by users which are then approved for posting on the main page by admins (known as "greenlighting" an article). Submitters regularly come up with witty tag-lines to attract the reader's (or admin's) attention. Every article also has a discussion board, which often provides interesting, if not humorous, reading.
Admins on Fark often "greenlight" contentious political articles or commentary to attract discussion. Some would call these postings flamebait, as the articles, tag-lines, or even the type of article (such as "Spiffy" or "Stupid" - The "Ironic" tag most often starts a debate as to whether or not the article or tagline truly fits under the definition of "ironic") usually results in a flamewar. This is further compounded by the fact that these types of discussion often attract people, known as Internet trolls, who try to stir up even more conflict.
TotalFark.com is the same as Fark, but members are able to see, and comment on, all submitted articles (not just "greenlighted" articles).
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The site
Originally, the web server on Drew Curtis's fark.com domain contained no content, except for an image of a squirrel with large testicles (http://img.fark.com/images/squirrel.jpg). Later, in 1999, the site was changed into a popular weblog, as a way for Curtis to share what he considered interesting news postings with his friends rather than sending them numerous emails. This proved to be so popular that a web-based method of submitting links was added, to avoid receiving all of their numerous emails. Eventually, Drew decided Fark needed a talkative community built around its theme of off-the-wall humorous news links, and so the fark "Comments Thingee" was born, along with a system of Fark.com user accounts.
Fark defined
Fark is a euphemism for fuck. Forms of the word include farking, farked, farker. Like many online communities, Fark.com has developed its own in-jokes known as "Farkisms" or "Fark.com clichés". For example, "Fb- is the father" is often added to any report involving birth or pregnancy. One of these in-jokes is a clever way of preventing "first post" messages: if a message contains the words "first post" its time stamp is changed twelve hours into the future (making it one of the later posts), and the words "First Post" are turned into "Boobies". However new users occasionally fall victim to this, and post a message that ends up saying something like: "This is my Boobies on Fark". The filter also censors out certain swear words.
Fark clichés also tend to be placed into the submitted news headlines. A few examples are: "find Sarah Connor" (from the Terminator movies) for technology news headlines (Example: "New robot will explore the surface of mars, find Sarah Connor"), "Duke sucks" (the basketball team) for sports news headlines, and "jailarity ensues" for headlines involving stupid people triggering intervention by authorities (Example: Woman makes joke about bomb in her suitcase to airport security screeners, jailarity ensues).
With the popularity of the website, many new submitters don't grasp the proper context of each cliché. This leads to an overuse of "Today's <odd story> brought to you by <city of odd story>" and "hilarity ensues".
Farking
"Fark" can also be used as a verb. "Farking" is simply the act of visiting, or commenting on the Fark.com Comments thingee. In another use, it can be an unintended consequence of a website being linked on Fark. To say that a website is "farked" simply means that it has gotten so many hits that it has stopped responding. A "farked" website suffers many of the same issues created by the Slashdot effect.
Photoshop contests
Fark.com also features regular "Photoshop contests" where users use a graphical editing program (such as Adobe Photoshop, from which the contest draws its name) to create various funny pictures derived from an image provided by the creator of the contest, or less commonly according to a set theme as set out in written form. Clichés (really, in-jokes) are common in the resulting works; some of the most common recurring clichés include Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars yelling "It's a trap!", the killing of kittens (http://i.xanga.com/staque/t/kill%20kitten.jpg), Bat Boy, the aforementioned large-testicled squirrel, and Domo-kun, a squarish teethy brown monster from Japan (who also originated the kitten-killing cliché). Often in entries that are offensive or sacreligious (or, especially, entries involving the September 11th terrorist attacks) the submitter will kiddingly ask for a "one way ticket to hell, please". This is often abbreviated, so a poster with an obviously disrespectful topic may just say "one ticket, please" or even simply "aisle seat".
Mozilla Firefox
Fark also has its own Mozilla Firefox Web browser plugin called "FARKIT" (http://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=374) which makes quoting other members' comments a one-click deal.
Similar sites
Fark.com's arch-rival is Somethingawful.com. The common practice in both communities of using Photoshop to alter photographs sparked a Something Awful vs. Fark Photoshop Battle (http://www.somethingawful.com/archives/news-archive-21-1-2002.htm), with Wil Wheaton as celebrity judge. The result (http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=903) of this battle was Fark's victory over Something Awful with an overall team score of 192 to 183. This result has been questioned by many of the Something Awful participants, as Wil Wheaton is known to be a frequenter of Fark. Some believe that Fark's victory was solely due to bias.
Fark also has similarities to Slashdot in relation to the Slashdot effect. Like Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org), Fark.com also has a large user base and thousands of users can go to a single server in a matter of hours or even minutes. Whenever a server that hosts the submitted link on Fark.com goes down, it is said to be "farked." Mostly this happens with the submission of a "Boobies" link.
"Farking" has also become popular on various sports message boards, most notably SoonerFans.com (http://www.soonerfans.com/).
External links
- Fark.com (http://www.fark.com)
- Farquently Asked Questions (http://www.fark.com/farq/index.shtml)
- Farkisms (http://www.fark.com/farq/farkisms.shtml)
- Farkit download and FAQ (http://www.fark.com/firefox/)
- Fark RSS Feed (http://www.fark.name)
- Uncyclopedia entry on Fark (http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Fark)
- UltraFark.com (http://www.ultrafark.com/)