FARK.com is one of the hippest sites on the World Wide Web. At its heart, FARK is a news agreggator, harnessing the power of thousands of contributors who dig out the funniest, most controversial and strangest material on the Internet.
The FARK faithful submit thousands of links every day, making the site a model of participatory democracy. But only a fraction of those links make it on the site. Drew Curtis, the founder of FARK, is the filter through which every link passes before it makes it to the front page.
We caught up with Curtis at a Sports by Brooks event in Sacramento.
BadMouth: There are people out there, I’m sure, who only get their news from FARK, what kind of picture of the world do they get?
Drew Curtis: FARK says that once a month, somewhere in the world, a wife chops her husband’s penis off. At least once a day, somewhere in America, a tractor-trailer truck full of food overturns. Florida and California are really weird places to live. The British have horrible teeth. France surrenders. I’m trying to think about what else we have on there…Oh, and the Japanese are just a horribly, horribly screwed up culture.
BadMouth: FARK doesn’t seem to have an underlying ideology. Do you make any effort to “steer the ship” and keep it in the middle?
Drew Curtis: Actually, it’s really funny. Rather than trying to keep it in the middle, we try to steer it really hard left and right, all the time—with any luck, a good balance between the two. This week is a pretty good example. On Monday or Tuesday we’d run some pretty good right-wing articles in the last 48 hours. So much so, that I was getting complaints about it.
I was doing a lot of my work out of a Starbucks in downtown San Francisco in the morning. So I get there at 6:00 A.M., and I’m talking to Jeff who’s taking care of the link selection. He says, “I’m getting a lot of complaints about this. So I guess we should do some left articles.”
I say, “That sounds fine to me.”
He said, “What would that be exactly?”
I’m like, “Well, uh ‘Bush sucks,’ ‘The economy’s bad,’ and, uh, ‘The Iraq thing isn’t going so well.’ — Stick to that. That’ll probably do it.”
BadMouth: So in some sense, you do try try to guide the site, at least to create a balance between the two sides.
Drew Curtis: We do polarities in equal amounts.
BadMouth: So you try not to inject your politics into the site. Is there anything of your personality that does show in FARK?
| “Everyone else is stupid, and you’re not.” |
Drew Curtis: Yeah, kind of the general theme—I was talking to someone from a newspaper that hit the nail on the head as far as themes on FARK go. It’s that “Everyone else is stupid, and you’re not.” That part of my personality comes through.
BadMouth: How much of the work do you actually do on the site?
Drew Curtis: When I’m home, 95-percent of it. When I’m on the road like now, five percent, maybe. There’s only two other guys. They split the duty when I’m gone, then when I get back I take over.
BadMouth: How hard is it to balance the need to keep FARK relatively free with the need to pay the bandwidth bills?
Drew Curtis: It isn’t too bad. There’s certain things we won’t do. We don’t run pop-ups; we won’t sell links—that kind of stuff. We’ll put ads up all day long. Generally the ad style kind of takes care of itself. Your mainstream, mass-market ads totally fail on FARK.
We’ve gone through all of the mass-market advertising guys. There are none left, because they don’t get anything. No one clicks on them. Nothing happens. Like that “Smack The Monkey, Win $10,000?” That stuff did horrible on our site. Not surprisingly, because it’s all crap, anyway.
BadMouth: Does it work for anybody?
| I had advertisers berating us. They had ‘Smack The Monkey’ ads. They were giving us crap, like ‘Why are your click-thrus so low?’I was like, “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because your ads suck.” |
Drew Curtis: Evidently it does, because I had advertisers berating us. They had “Smack The Monkey” ads. They were giving us crap, like “Why are your click-thrus so low?”
I was like, “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because your ads suck.”
They were like, “Well, we have some markets that are like 5-percent [click-thrus].” I don’t buy that for a minute. I don’t think that traffic is legitimate, because no one clicks on that stuff. I’m sorry, but no one does it.
BadMouth: Slashdot is the other big community-driven site. Unlike you they “sold out to the man” a few years ago. Has anyone tried to buy FARK?
Drew Curtis: It happens a lot. My favorite was the guy who offered me like $40,000. He made it out to be this giant sum of money—which granted it is. I wouldn’t mind having $40,000. You can sign me a $40,000 check anytime you want. But as far as just sheer humor value goes, that’s just not quite going to cut it.
We haven’t [sold FARK] because we really started to take off after the dot-com boom had ended. There was nobody around. Slashdot, they sold in late ‘98 early ‘99 or something like that.
BadMouth: Does FARK make any money at all?
Drew Curtis: It’s paying the bills for itself, which is more than I could ever hope for, honestly. We got lucky. By the time it got too expensive to run, we were saved by the fact that I owned the ISP it was on. If we had to pay that bill, FARK would have died. We couldn’t have made it.
Right now, we’re stockpiling cash away. We’re going to have to buy a bigger server pretty soon, and we’re not going to have to have a fundraising drive this time. We’re just going to be able to afford that, which is cool.
BadMouth: FARK isn’t a porn site, but you do have boobies links in there. Do you have a test to determine what crosses the line?
| Nudity? People ripping their clothes off and running around? That’s fine. No problem. But actual porn doesn’t fly. |
Drew Curtis: Yeah, actually porn does. Nudity? People ripping their clothes off and running around? That’s fine. No problem. But actual porn doesn’t fly.
BadMouth: That gets us into Supreme Court territory. How do you define “porn?”
Drew Curtis: The actual sex-stuff going on. What we do is “Would this ever show up in Playboy?” That’s what we’re using [to define porn].
BadMouth: My wife gets upset if she finds me looking at the virtual boobies on the Internet. You do these events with real live boobies. Does your wife mind?
Drew Curtis: She doesn’t care. Doesn’t bother her a bit. There’s a funny comedian—I forget what his name is—he said, “It doesn’t matter where you get your appetite. It’s whether or not you take your meals at home.”
BadMouth: What can “legitimate” news sites learn from a place like FARK?
Drew Curtis: I don’t know. And the reason I say I don’t know, is that I was invited to speak at the Newspaper Association of America Conference last January. Long story short, they’re kind of hampered by the fact that the newspapers understand about having Web sites. The publishers just aren’t willing to take risks like that. There are a couple of newspapers out there that are, like AZ Central, which is the Arizona Republic, I believe, out of Phoenix, and The Kansas City Star, both have owners that are willing to take risks like that. The rest of them are not willing to go that way.
If you own a company that’s been around for 100, 150 years, and it works. There’s not really any incentive to go out there on a limb and do anything else crazy like that. The flip-side of that is that there are plenty of other mainstream outlets out there that are trying to do with FARK does, and they can’t do it.
BadMouth: Do you think FARK utilizes the medium of the Internet in a unique way? Would a paper version of FARK even be possible?
| Anybody could do what we do—no problem&mdsah;and 10,000 people have. And it hasn’t worked. |
Drew Curtis: I don’t think so. There’s something about—and I don’t want to sound like I’m tooting my own horn here—there’s something about the link selection and the tagline selection that makes all the difference. Anybody could do what we do—no problem—and 10,000 people have. And it hasn’t worked.
Why not? What that means is, it’s not the idea. It’s the process. It’s like hamburger restaurants. There are 10,000 hamburger restaurants out there, but you can name your favorite one, and you can explain what it is about that place that does it. It’s not the concept of a hamburger restaurant. It’s how these particular guys do it.
BadMouth: If you had to break it down by percentages, how much of FARK’s success was luck and how much was genius, what would you say?
Drew Curtis: It’s half and half. That’s the way it is with any kind of business. It’s half opportunities presented to you and it’s half converting them.
BadMouth: You get thousands of links a day. How many of them are complete and utter crap?
Drew Curtis: Aw, most of them. We get 2,000 a day. We pick about 50.
BadMouth: You get all those links. How many of them are trying to plug a site?
Drew Curtis: We don’t have many people trying to push an angle. Actually the number one rejected reason for a link not getting on the main page is because it’s a repeat. Literally, stuff will come in six hours later after it’s been on the main page.
BadMouth: Do you have certain contributors that consistently “bring the goods?”
| The number one consideration on a link is the tagline. Number two is, “What’s the article about?” A funny tagline for a stupid article will make it. Whereas a bad tagline for a good article will not. |
Drew Curtis: There are certain guys—I mean, you can see them in the Top Submitters link on FARK. Those are the guys that are consistently turning in the stuff. It’s honestly the way they phrase them. The number one consideration on a link is the tagline. Number two is, “What’s the article about?” A funny tagline for a stupid article will make it. Whereas a bad tagline for a good article will not.
BadMouth: What’s it like being an Internet celebrity?
Drew Curtis: I was talking with Wil Wheaton about this. Monday or Tuesday night, we were in San Francisco doing that Tech TV thing. We were staying at the same hotel so we closed the bar down both nights, and we were talking about this very issue.
Because on Tuesday before we shot the Tech TV thing, we went to Alcatraz. He walks downstairs wearing a Wheaton T-shirt from Wheaton College. And I was like, “Man, that’s totally going to give you away.” And actually it didn’t. But my experience has been that when I’m not wearing a FARK T-shirt, I’m invisible. When I have a FARK shirt on that’s when I find people all day long. I get recognized nonstop.
BadMouth: What’s the average crazed FARK fan have on his mind that he needs to share with you?
Drew Curtis: Actually, not much. They don’t realize it’s me most of the time. They’re like, “That’s a cool T-shirt.”
I’m like, “Thanks, it’s my Web site.”
They’re like, “Oh really? No shit?”
It’s like being Superman. You take the glasses off and no one knows who you are. Without the T-shirt, no one knows me. It’s the perfect celebrity.
BadMouth: Copyright has become a huge issue on the Internet with the RIAA and the MPAA and every other trade group trying to crack down on Internet users. You guys do the Photoshop contests, where people copy and alter copyrighted photographs. Has anyone tried to crack down on you?
Drew Curtis: Oh yeah. It happens a lot actually. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If we were doing this in print, no one could ever say anything about it, but the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is much more strict than print laws are on the same thing. So it’s totally bogus.
As far as the Photoshop stuff goes, in general, what’s happening there definitely falls under “fair use,” without a question. We’re just not willing to fight it, yet. But I’m talking to some guys about setting up a tar-baby type of a situation, where we pull an image down. We Photoshop it. We know it’s totally legal from the get-go. And then when they come and try and sue us, we nail them.
| Let’s get the Digital Millennium Copyright Act overturned. I was waiting for somebody else to do it, but it’s taken a long time. I think we’re going to have to step up to the plate and do it. |
Do the old tar-baby thing. They get stuck and we just pull them in and say “A-ha! Let’s get the Digital Millennium Copyright Act overturned. I was waiting for somebody else to do it, but it’s taken a long time. I think we’re going to have to step up to the plate and do it.
We’re going to have to suck somebody in. Because the longer this sits around, the more precedent gets stacked up behind it, the less likely it’s going to be that this gets overturned. We’re going to have to do this pretty soon, is what this boils down to.
BadMouth: Well, I covered my list of smart-sounding questions. Is there anything about FARK that I should be asking about that I missed?
Drew Curtis: Aw, I have no idea. I’ve been drinking beer.
This is what happened to BadMouth the last time we got FARKed.
December 16th, 2003 at 1:33 am
Why didn’t you ask Drew about why he bans people? Censorship?
December 16th, 2003 at 1:38 am
the p3nixes are the weiners!!!
December 16th, 2003 at 1:44 am
True. Banning and post-deleting without any explanation is RAMPANT on Fark and REALLY ruins it as a site of free expression. You really have to toe the line on Fark. Too bad.
December 16th, 2003 at 1:46 am
Almost forgot - my solution? SlashCode.
Slashcode-based fark with mod and meta-mod would be my dream come true. Let the people decide what they want to read, not a handful of apparently stuck-up elitists.
December 16th, 2003 at 1:47 am
Fuck Fark. Everyone knows Something Awful is where it’s at. Better forums, better photoshops, better users. And less “HAY GUYS BOOOOBIEEEEEZ IT’S SI A TRAP LOL I AM FUNNY!”
December 16th, 2003 at 1:47 am
Drew should hang with the bizzos crew.
December 16th, 2003 at 1:50 am
You should have asked Drew if he got that sweater I sent him. Does it fit? It’s not too scratchy is it? Does he like the colour? Does he wear it? Does he wear it all the time? Does he think of me when he wears it? Does he love me? Why won’t he return my calls? Was it something I did? I can change!
December 16th, 2003 at 1:57 am
There are others. Big lists which are forming now, and canm use more contributors- like say pantsfactory.com
December 16th, 2003 at 2:06 am
I must agree, the censorship and left wing bias has worn much of the shine off of FARK for me. I read madville.com most of the time instead.
December 16th, 2003 at 2:13 am
Nah, censorship would be if you put up a comment on YOUR site and Drew made a stink and had your website shut down.
But it’s his site, so comments posted on it make him liable (for hosting the message, even if you wrote it) so thus, I don’t blame him if he bans certain people for consistently posting messages on his site which would cause him legal problems.
FARK.com is a private business, and has no mandate to host your posts on their server on their time and money. Much of FARK is free, you’re not paying for anything to post on there, and if you’re upset that a post of yours got deleted or you got banned because of your conduct and you feel it’s an infringement on your right to free speech and press, then it’s up to you to either voice it on a medium like USENET (where you’re most likely to get the kind of freedom you want to say what you like without moderation or censorship) or to pay for your own server and bandwidth with which to host your points of view, instead of expecting other people to pay to host views that they may not agree with or should not be held liable for.
Basically, don’t be an asshat, I think is the moral of the story, and it pretty much says as much in the FArQ. Some people lose html privileges for consistently posting images in threads which are NSFW (instead of linking it and explicitly stating that it is NSFW). Others get banned for consistently acting like a total and complete ass towards other FARKers. Also, it may just as easily be another Admin or moderator who has been entrusted by Drew to take care of things while he’s away, and then it’s their decision and prerogative if they choose to ban you for FArQ conduct violation.
It’s not like I see Drew, the Admin or the Moderators consistently powertripping or censoring people’s posts on the threads, or banning certain people they don’t like just because they don’t agree with them, etc. You may feel that way, but chances are it’s not so much what you were saying that got you banned, but how you said it (i.e. you may have had a good point but you ruined it by swearing at someone or posting people’s personal info, etc.)
You’re entitled to free speech: no one is stopping you from yelling at the top of your lungs out on the street that you think FARK Admins are a bunch of censorship freaks. You’re welcome to start printing out flyers condemning FARK as being against free speech and press, and flypostering it on telephone poles. You’re welcome to organize demonstrations against FARK.com for infringing your ‘rights’ to ‘free speech’ because they removed one of your posts where you mudslinging and violating the FArQ rules of conduct.
It may make you look like a complete asshat, but it’s certainly your right to do those things. But what is not your right is expecting other people’s websites and ISPs to host your point of view for free on the internet, especially when they don’t agree with what you have to say, and you have clearly violated posted rules of conduct which delineate under what circumstances you may be banned or otherwised censored, and you certainly can’t expect that they’d put up with that level of asshattery for free.
Like I said, if you want that kind of free press for your viewpoint, best take it to USENET: there are plenty of free USENET news servers available where you’re free to post anything you wish in any newsgroup without fear of censorship.
Or you could just agree to stop being an asshat and stick to the code of conduct written in the FArQ. It’s not like the FArQ is very uptight, long or written in legalese, and there are fewer rules in place than on many other web discussion forums, so chances are if you get banned or lose your html privileges or see your posts deleted, it’s probably because you were acting like an extreme asshat, even if you don’t think you were.
December 16th, 2003 at 2:15 am
If you got banned you are an idiot. I got banned but sucked up hard and got let back in.
Be on your best behaviour ever after that day.
December 16th, 2003 at 2:21 am
sorry for the double post
December 16th, 2003 at 2:29 am
Fark is so last year.
December 16th, 2003 at 2:33 am
Um…..Max Dink, I seriously hope you’re joking. Fark can keep on banning whom ever they want, but eventually, all FARK is going to be is a small tight knit group of ‘friends’ (i.e. the mods) and the IDIOTS who kiss their ass…..such as yourself apparently. Its one thing to come into a thread and say something completely offensive and then get banned….but what fun would FARK be if it was just a bunch of well behaved people who were too scared to say something ‘wrong’. The farkers are my favorite part of fark, otherwise it would just be a bunch of friends having a pleasant conversation with each other…and who wants to read that?
December 16th, 2003 at 2:40 am
Max Dink, I seriously hope you’re kidding. If Fark keeps banning everyone then all it will be is a small tight knit group of friends (i.e. the mods) and those that kiss their ass….such as yourself apparently. It’s one thing to say something completely offensive and get banned but being banned because you said something that one of the mods didn’t agree with, well…. And anyway, the different farker personalities are what makes Fark…Fark…. What fun would fark be if it was just a bunch of friends and people too ’scared’ to say the ‘wrong’ thing, engaging in a pleasant conversation….
December 16th, 2003 at 2:44 am
You forgot to ask Drew why Fark.com sucks so much. Why, after so many years, are they still babbling on about France surrendering? It’s lame and it’s old. Point all intellectuals to http://www.somethingawful.com
December 16th, 2003 at 2:44 am
and that goes double! apparently…..
December 16th, 2003 at 2:45 am
There will always be detractors of anything that succeeds. There will be those that whine about this and that on Fark and how site x is better or funnier or smarter or whatever.
Fark’s continued success speaks for itself.
December 16th, 2003 at 2:49 am
What I don’t understand are people who suggest there’s a LEFT WING slant to FARK. If anything, from the approved links posted lately with their corresponding headlines, I can only assume there’s a RIGHT WING slant to FARK.
But in general, I’ve noticed that on some weeks it’ll be straight Bush-lovin’, and then there’ll be other days when all the approved links/headlines are anti-Bush, so it’s as Drew states in the interview: it’s always one or the other.
Afterall, FARK would be pretty bland if all it was was moderate articles with inoffensive headlines.
mytwocents, while I understand your concerns, I’ve yet to see posts deleted for simply being rude, mannerless boors or stupid, uninformed, ignorant asshattery. Hell, I’ve seen obvious flamebait troll posts all the time from the same consistent trolls all the time but I never see them get banned.
It’s only when people cross a certain line and get personal (and by personal, I mean like posting people’s RL name/address/phone/email or threatening them) that I see posts deleted or bannination occurring, and I think that’s fair to draw the line at that kind of conduct.
It’s not a matter of only allowing posts which kiss Drew/FARK ass, but trying to make sure that no one gets too out-of-hand and out of control that they start breaking the law by making threats (idle or not).
December 16th, 2003 at 2:59 am
William, FARK already points to SomethingAwful, considering SomethingAwful.com is listed under the “Friends” of FARK on the right side of your screen. Anyway, I’d hardly call most people on FARK ‘intellectuals’ (with the exception of people like mutilato and CapnWacky who were discussing nature vs. nurture in the FARK personals comments thread of all places the other night, and very civilly too I might add).
I really only hit up SomethingAwful for Cliff Yablonski.
Anyway, ‘France surrenders’ among other FARK cliches are cliches for a reason: because they get used so often they’re hackneyed, yet after a while they are so overused that they live on in legend.
Besides, that’s more a matter of FARKers overusing the cliches (the way they were meant to be overused) than anything Drew has to do with (although ‘ surrenders’ headlines do get approved an awful lot, but then so do ‘hilarity ensues.’ headlines even when hilarity doesn’t ensue, even from the headline). But tht’s neither here nor there.
But hey, if you think FARK sucks, put up your own website (and no, I’m not just being snide, I’m serious). If you think you can do better, do it. I’d be just as happy plugging and defending your site if it’s good and I like it, as much as I do FARK. And I tell you, I doubt I’d visit FARK as much or post as much if there weren’t so many rightwing flamebait trolls and general asshats on there who are just asking, nay, begging me to post a 4000+ word paper on why I think they’re ignorant, uninformed morons.
December 16th, 2003 at 3:14 am
Modding and banning are rampant and without accountability.
It’s partly the format of Fark. If some asshat posts a long 10 page post that sucks, you can’t mod it down like on slashdot. It either has to be deleted or left there sucking up pagespace. And since there’s no accountability, it’s like the gestapo when moderating happens.
Fark is free to do whatever they want. But I’m also free to complain about it.
My suggestion would be to do like americasarmy forums, and send every deleted post to a special thread, so that posts don’t just disappear.
BTW, is that THE mytwocents posting here? Or just a pretender?
December 16th, 2003 at 3:20 am
Krantzstone, If that were true, then I’d still be ‘unbanned’. Now given, its not actually Drew who has issues with me and I’ve never said so but I’ve since been back to Fark, many times, as different ‘people’ and have purposely watched what I said…and then all of a sudden one day, my posts are visible ‘only by me’ which of course means you’ve been banned. And there were times when I hadn’t even posted anything for 2 weeks and then all of a sudden…poof. I’ve no doubt that the admins ‘fark’ with people on there just for the ‘fark’ of it, but if that’s what they enjoy doing for their shiats and giggles…..
December 16th, 2003 at 3:24 am
The REAL mytwocents?
http://thespinzone.com/
December 16th, 2003 at 3:30 am
Actually, the censorship on Fark is getting much worse. It has nothing to do with violating any rules, copyrights, or such. Basically, if one of mods is having a bad day or you happen to say something about his favorite movie that he doesn’t like, you can be banned without warning or explanation. It doesn’t matter if you violate the posted rules or not. The moderation on Fark has become rather arbitrary, capricious, petty, and just plain juvenile.
December 16th, 2003 at 3:32 am
Yes….tis ME!!!
December 16th, 2003 at 3:40 am
Just don’t say anything bad about Nebraska. One of the Fark moderators must be from there. Even if what you say is true a negative about Nebraska gets you banned for awhile.
Too much of that will drive users away.
December 16th, 2003 at 3:47 am
feffer, gee, I’d love to answer you in the fark thread but I seem to have been banned.
December 16th, 2003 at 3:58 am
Bah, somethingawful is only for those who can pay from what I can tell. Claiming that it’s the only way they can survive.
Oh yeah, fark seems to be doing pretty good, and I can post there without paying. Makes actually paying for totalfark just that more enticing down the road.
December 16th, 2003 at 3:58 am
Bah, somethingawful is only for those who can pay from what I can tell. Claiming that it’s the only way they can survive.
Oh yeah, fark seems to be doing pretty good, and I can post there without paying. Makes actually paying for totalfark just that more enticing down the road.
December 16th, 2003 at 4:05 am
Krantzstone, people suggest a left wing slant to FARK not because of the articles posted but because of the majority of the people who post.
December 16th, 2003 at 4:09 am
/pays respect to the great mytwocents.
December 16th, 2003 at 4:22 am
I don’t know, I’ve been pretty harsh on people, offensive, doubting there ability to think for themselves etc.. and I have never been banned.
However, there does seem to be a liberal slant to the Farkers. Maybe that is because we think for ourselves, and don’t buy into that whole invisible guy in the sky thing….
Either way, it is a fun place to set back, drink a beer and enter the fray.
December 16th, 2003 at 4:30 am
To those who are comparing somethingawful with fark. Its not the same. That’s like saying “dude my car is so much sweeter than your hairdo” You guys are all idiots. They are both awesome sites.
December 16th, 2003 at 4:41 am
A previous poster said: “I must agree, the censorship and left wing bias has worn much of the shine off of FARK for me.”
I agree that the censorship sucks, but what left wing bias? Fark is just to the right of Hitler half the time. The left gets a word in edgewise, and you call it a left wing bias? I’ll bet you listen to talk radio.
December 16th, 2003 at 4:53 am
Some of the banning gets a little masonic.
i posted a couple of minor things - seriously nothing surprising or really all that noteworthy, just comments like all the rest. deleted in minutes. waited two weeks, tried again, bam. gone right away.
entered a photoshop contest, bam, deleted.
it was funny, too.
i got a new handle, and now there’s no problem.
nobody liked “badgerplasty”, I guess.
December 16th, 2003 at 4:58 am
funny how its mostly banned people complaining, oh wait no its not..
now wheres that axe
December 16th, 2003 at 5:02 am
I got banned from Fark. Five times. I joined under different aliases with different web/email addresses, and made no reference to my original alias, and still I got banned again. Drew bans you for anything. I got banned the first time because I said that a $50 fee to join TotalFark for one year was absurd. I sell shareware that takes me a year to develop and I only charge $20 for that.
The other times I got banned I’m not even sure why I got banned. One time I think I may have used an old web address which said sswift in it for a photoshop… That’s the only thing I can figure on. After that I got smart, but I still got banned three more times. My last banning was because I posted an audioedit and apparently my server isn’t good enough for fark, even though it’s a link and not a photo that won’t load. I guess those of us who don’t have expensive webservers aren’t allowed to contribute to fark. Well screw Drew then. I’m tired of writing to him asking why another one of my aliases got banned, or why I was banned permanently instead of temporarily the first time with a warning. I won one of the photoshop contests with a funny Ackbar photoshop with him as a sliced ham, and I’ve come in second on several more, but I guess Drew doesn’t want to benefit from my FREE constributions of funny content to his website. hell he should give people who win photoshop contests a free totalfark account for making fark a funnier place. He owes it to the people who work for free to make his website so popular.
So I won’t be posting on Fark anymore. I realised I was just wasting time which would be better spent working on my games. But it ticks me off that Drew does this to his faithful users, so I thought I should post this one last time in a forum where the people of fark will see it.
December 16th, 2003 at 5:19 am
Good job by whoever at badmouth.net interviewed Drew Curtis. I’ve read and heard many interviews that others have done with him and your interview is one of the best.
The banning debate is silly. Fark moderators are very even handed and fair in the way they deal with Farkers.
December 16th, 2003 at 5:28 am
I’m sure we all put great stock in the whining and moaning of the wretched tiny minority who can’t participate in a community without causing problems. Never mind that thousands of other people seem to participate on Fark without problem… they must all just be sheep.
Frickin’ whiners can’t even just give up the site, they’d rather keep going there, then cry how unfair it all is in places like this.
The opinions of those too moronic to even survive in the world of Fark (and if you’ve been there, you’ve seen that Fark doesn’t ask much) should be considered in context.
December 16th, 2003 at 5:37 am
http://www.newsfilter.org
If your unhappy with fark.com, just go here… that’s where they scab all their stuff anywho.
December 16th, 2003 at 5:44 am
Krantzstone, you’re a tool.
People get banned because they tried to be funny and the mods were having a bad day. I’ve seen it.
Simply for having different senses of humor.
So STFU and stop kissing ass, even though that seems to be what you do best.
December 16th, 2003 at 5:44 am
~~I’m sure we all put great stock in the whining and moaning of the wretched tiny minority who can’t participate in a community without causing problems.~~
I think you’re missing the point. The point is that you don’t need to cause a problem to be banned and that’s the problem with Fark’s moderation.
December 16th, 2003 at 5:46 am
Krantzstone, make your point and leave. This is not a discussion group, especially not a fark one, or you would have probably been already banned.
December 16th, 2003 at 5:50 am
I’m not going to call anyone here a liar, since I don’t know any of you from Adam (or Eve). That being said, because I don’t know you from Adam or Eve there’s no way for me to verify for certain whether what you’re saying is true or unbiased.
I’ll admit, I can’t say for certain that there aren’t moderator-related abuses of power on FARK. I don’t know Drew or the mods or admin from Adam or Eve either. And I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with unscrupulous, powertripping, personally biased, on-the-take moderators (there was one particular bad one on the Asheron’s Call game forum, as well as the one on the MudConnector.com which banned me even though I didn’t use one swear word to make my points or break any rules), so I’m not so naive to believe that such people don’t exist.
But if you’re honest and serious about these allegations, and they bother you enough to post comments like this here and on FARK, perhaps you should start your own website, if only to show other FARKers what is going on.
At the very least, something like that might spur Drew to institute a more formalized system of moderation that is transparent and accountable, in the same way that people’s posts are accountable. Even if everything is on the up-and-up, it’s impossible for people to know either way unless such things are totally above board so that everyone can see exactly what is going on.
Otherwise, it becomes impossible to dispel rumours of impropriety or bias in thread moderators, even if there is none. While I personally, if I were a moderator, had nothing to hide because I knew I wasn’t guilty of such acts, would probably just laugh off any allegations of powertripping, I also realize that just because I know I wouldn’t do such a thing, or my friends know, doesn’t mean the average FARKer would know, and all they’d hear were persistent, vicious rumours about me being a powertripping moderator and they’d have no way of verifying if it was true, and I’d have no method of clearing my name, and that kind of thing will, as etymxris suggested, ultimately lead to distrust and the fragmentation of an otherwise fairly friendly online community (even if the right/left wings are constantly trying to tear each other apart, myself included).
I do realize it’s easy to defend FARK by saying “It’s their site, their rules” as I have before, but I also know that without the FARKers who take time out of their day to sit around bitching, whining, flaming, trolling, photoshopping, submitting, clicking on links, telling their friends, spreading the word, etc., there would be no FARK.com, so I have to admit that any allegations of impropriety should be quickly investigated to clear the air and so we all know what’s what.
I for one on the one hand don’t want to hear about innocent, selfless volunteer moderators getting unfairly slandered or character assassinated by some disgruntled former FARKers who were banned with good reason, but on the other hand I don’t want to continue to waste time contributing to photoshops, submitting links, making comments, etc. to an online community that doesn’t care if a few innocent people get pushed out of the community for no other reason than some kind of bias or powertripping on the part of those who run the site. After all, if that were the case, you never know who could be next, it could be you. It could be me.
To paraphrase Reverend Martin Niemoller (I bet he’s spinning in his grave now just thinking about how horribly I’m paraphrasing him and recontextualizing his words for something relatively inane as this):
“In Farkistan they came first for the Trolls and I didn’t speak up
because I wasn’t a Troll. Then they came for the Flamers and I didn’t
speak up because I wasn’t a Flamer. Then they came for the Asshats
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Asshat. Then they came for
the Neocons and I didn’t speak up because I was a Democrap. Then they
came for me–and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
December 16th, 2003 at 5:56 am
On Dec 16, 2003 5:46 AM ExFarkFan said:
“Krantzstone, make your point and leave. This is not a discussion group, especially not a fark one, or you would have probably been already banned.”
No, see, the quote is actually “make like a tree, and leave”, but I digress.
Hey, if you are a true believer in freedom of speech, be prepared to listen to people who don’t agree with you. And more importantly, be prepared to listen to someone as longwinded as I am. And love it.
Your acting pissy to me isn’t going to help convince me that you’re not just some troll who totally deserved to be banninated, you know. If YOU have a point, then make one coherently, logically, reasonably, calmly and back it up with facts, with proof. If not publicly, feel free to email me, my email is in my FARK profile.
I have no biases, and no agenda. The question here is: do you?
December 16th, 2003 at 6:05 am
On Dec 16, 2003 5:44 AM ExFarkFan said:
“Krantzstone, you’re a tool.
People get banned because they tried to be funny and the mods were having a bad day. I’ve seen it.
Simply for having different senses of humor.
So STFU and stop kissing ass, even though that seems to be what you do best”
Oh ho. With an attitude like that, no wonder you got banninated.
Seriously, if you’re just hurt and bitter and need to vent, fine, but if you have a genuine point to make, then by all means, make it. Discuss the issue. Rationally. Coherently. Logically. Reasonably. Calmly.
And by that, I mean, no ad hominem attacks (like the ones you’ve been making against me for no apparent reason despite the fact that you don’t know me from Adam) because they lend absolutely no credence to your arguments, and in fact just serve to further convince us all that you’re nothing more than a flamebaiting asshat troll who got banned for being an ass towards other FARKers.
Have I called you a “tool” yet? Nope. Because I don’t need to call people names to make my point. I don’t have to put people down as an alternative to arguing a case logically and reasonably.
To accuse me of “ass kissing” (and how exactly would that help me? Get me a year’s worth of free TotalFARK? Puh-leeze, if I was going to whore out my ethics and beliefs I’m certainly going to charge more than $60 worth of an online membership to a news filter website. :P) when you don’t know me from Adam, you certainly have a way with words that’s guaranteed to get even unbiased people’s backs up and turn on you, you know that? Good thing I’m such a nice, genial guy who doesn’t take online insults personally (I’ve heard every insult in the book thrown at me from the worst trolls on USENET - being called a “tool” is almost a compliment by comparison), and I’m still willing to listen to your side of the story.
Or you can act all bitter, resentful and lash out at anyone and everyone and further undermine your credibility.
Your choice, man.
December 16th, 2003 at 6:06 am
sswift, you rawk with that sliced ham of me. That was great.
Luv,
Ackbar
December 16th, 2003 at 6:10 am
Sorry everyone, I forgot to tell you that I’m a total tool. Long live giant pickles in my goat, see.
I’ll keep this note short, unlike all my other posts.
December 16th, 2003 at 6:28 am
I am like a fark insider and think I’m so great cause my lame taglines get posted cause I know people who know people. I forget the fact that fark isn’t funny anymore cause good links don’t get posted only about ten people’s submissions do. In fact I’m the asshat who invented audio-edits and am so happy that there are three audio-edit links a day. Who cares if the photoshops are lame like “a bird, happiness, and sanskirt letters”. Truth be told, I invented total-fark to black mail old-school farkers to paying to actually see the funny links again (instead of the lame ones on the main page).
December 16th, 2003 at 6:33 am
‘No, see, the quote is actually “make like a tree, and leave”, but I digress’
It is actually “leaf” which makes it funny. Well not real funny, but fark.com funny. Your brillant correction is a little off seeing as trees are immobile.
December 16th, 2003 at 6:40 am
To add to the ‘me-too’s.. I was banned for linking to a photo on Yahoo reuters feeds in an article ABOUT indecent reuter photos. It was a millions times more SFW than most of the other photos.
December 16th, 2003 at 6:45 am
etymxris:
Thank you! Glad to know people still remember me. Although I wish Mike and Mme would forget about me….
December 16th, 2003 at 6:49 am
I have to apologize for being a troll in the middle of a rational serious discussion. I’m on medication to medically castrate me because I had sex with my ex-girlfriend’s dog.
December 16th, 2003 at 7:01 am
Yo, Drew Curtis is a playahater. His fark crew ran up on my ill website, yo. I got an email from some farker saying fb- was my father, say what?I’m out! Peace! PS: Fark fools!
December 16th, 2003 at 7:16 am
un-Krantzstone, actually the joke IS “make like a tree and leave”, the joke being that trees, when they grow leaves, are said to be leafing, and the joke is a pun on that. Look it up on google some time.
And sorry, my ex-girlfriend didn’t have a dog, only a pussy, and I hit that every night and twice on Sundays.
Thank you, come again.
December 16th, 2003 at 7:18 am
I don’t know what y’all are complaining about. Fark’s a good site, so is http://www.xenex.org, so is something aweful. They are all totally different. If you act like a twit, you might get banned. Maybe the mods are asshats. But it’s mostly free and it’s not hard to make your own site on the net. So just calm down. Serious.
December 16th, 2003 at 7:18 am
I stand by my original statement,
Unless you act retarded (which I did) it is impossible to be banned.
December 16th, 2003 at 7:20 am
I totally got noticed at Alcatraz, Drew.
December 16th, 2003 at 9:42 am
Krantzstone is a very intelligent person with opinions of his/her own. Quite thought out ones i might add. Perhaps if the people who got banned wouldn’t whine about it so much, seeing as they’re not the ones paying the fark bills, they would realize there’s plenty of others out there who could contribute to the site in addition to them thereby keeping the community filled with good content. You WERE trying to keep the community filled with good content weren’t you?
- wheaton fan #3455
On another note: sure wil. they noticed you as that whiny “trek” d00d.
December 16th, 2003 at 10:43 am
The Fark admins must be so angry over this site where they can’t delete half the comments.
December 16th, 2003 at 11:19 am
Krantzstone Dec 16, 2003 2:13 AM
that was beautiful…
December 16th, 2003 at 11:45 am
Enjoy your 15 minutes Drew. Fark is swirling around the bowl. Lame-ass articles with semi-funny headlines are, well, lame-ass. Don’t think so? Dozens of 30 comment threads every day prove my point.
The comments about banning are totally correct. I got banned for 24 hrs. for “hate speech”, though I didn’t say anything hateful about anybody. Meanwhile, other farkers spew all sorts of anti-semetic and downright racist stuff without getting banned. Yes, black Farkers and liberals can call Rice and Powell monkeys and not get banned. The place is ruled by PC drones.
Fark was kind of fun once. Now it’s just a sorry home for a bunch of college-aged asshats.
December 16th, 2003 at 12:04 pm
DREW IS A FASCIST THAT BANS PEOPLE FOR ONE POST HE DOESN’T LIKE. DOYCOTT FARK.
December 16th, 2003 at 12:15 pm
BeepBeep you are banned. No more posting here for 2 whole days.
December 16th, 2003 at 12:44 pm
ha, i got banned for posting “need the hero tag” because some school wouldn’t let two lezbos go to a prom together. the thread was totally pro lezbo. steers hard right my ass.
December 16th, 2003 at 1:02 pm
fark.com is a weak site. its always full of repeats… and the forum moderators are lacking on the intellegence level, they are kids. I got banned once for “hacking” the website.
this is funny and shows the IQ and internet savvy of their administrators. read on…
there was this post “JOIN TOTALFARK TODAY!” and the concept was if you joined, you could filter people or posts. So, being bored I created my own IE6 compatable ActiveX control and got instantly banned for “Hacking” fark. All I did was post an image of it in action… for creating an anti-fark toolbar: http://www.shadowspawn.net/temp/unfarked.gif a simple activex control, similar to the google toolbar.
Hey it’s the end-user’s right to have their computer display what they want their computer to display.
Talk about total control; I didn’t even link to the download, I just posted a picture of it and got banned.
luckily other sites posted news about it and mirrored the concept application.
its good to know that those advertisements don’t reach those that don’t want them too and they can change a site’s content on the browser end.
they call that hacking a website. they are probably also never got passed AOL 3.0 either.
December 16th, 2003 at 1:08 pm
Hmmm.
So irrate over not being able to post on a website that you hate.
Don’t like it. Move along.
When Drew’s hits drop, then he’ll know that something is going the wrong direction.
Perhaps he’s able to afford this rampant, out-of-control banning due to his volume of traffic.
Maybe, just maybe, he’ll survive without you.
I’m sure there will be somebody to replace that annoying whiner or abuser ( even borderline abuser )
The squeeky wheel gets oiled?
Think of this fast food analogy. The majority of fast food workers HATE their jobs. Hate! But yet they still work there.
The fast food industry doesn’t have a problem replacing the workers they’ve lost. They still provide little or no benifits and low pay. Yet still thrive. Perhaps FARK is the fastfood of the internet. Consumed by a never ending customer base.
Ban roll on.
Sheesh, if I had that site, i’d probably ban people with a wave of my hand, simply to feed my ego. I’ve done it on my blog/journals. “Go away kid, ya bother me.”
There are many other news/links/whatever sites out there. Start your own Democratic site or support another one.
My rant is done.
December 16th, 2003 at 1:12 pm
Farker chimps = fast food workers.
Excellent analogy.
December 16th, 2003 at 1:22 pm
I was banned once. In a thread about what crossed the line regarding threats against the president, I posted that I wished harm to the president - specifically not physical harm, just harm. I got banned for wishing physical harm anyway.
I emailed drew pointing out the issue, and he apologised and unbanned me within a couple of hours.
Aside from that I’ve never had a problem. I think I had one post deleted because all it was was a massive grid of little images….
If there’s rampant abuse, I haven’t seen it.
December 16th, 2003 at 1:45 pm
Fark’s OK. Kinda yuppy’ish at times, but good subtleties in there. Have to say that http://www.BANGEDUP.com is the best free site though- shock, truth, comedy, the real… got it all.
December 16th, 2003 at 3:14 pm
I fark at least twice a day, when I wake up and when I go to sleep. If I got paid for telling people about fark,
I could make an honest living, but that would ruin my reputation. A day without fark is like a day with George Bush and Dick Hellaburton,Enron,and work. Thank you Mr.Drew Curtis for being there …
December 16th, 2003 at 4:24 pm
Fark is funny as hell. I haven’t gotten banned yet, so I guess I can’t relate to that.
If you guys who are saying you were banned for simply insulting a movie or a specific state are being serious, that is really wrong. My suspicion is that in making that insult, a fark rule was broken thus justifying the bannination… I hope. I’d hate to think you can truly be banned for stating an opinion.
I don’t know… I imagine I’ll just keep using fark in the same way I always have and take whatever bannination I bring upon myself ::shrug:: Like I said, hasn’t been an issue so far…
and I doubt there’s any way *I* could be ass kissing since I don’t even know drew or any mods or admins personally.
With that said… I like fark, I always know what’s going on in the news. I like to spend a great majority of my fark time using it as a news gathering tool, rather than hanging out in the threads.
and, dude, there are about ten to fifteen photoshoppers who are TOP NOTCH. Kudos folks!
December 16th, 2003 at 5:06 pm
oh don’t get me wrong, its a great site to test server bandwidth on photoshop contests (and some great ways to test other things) but its definitely not slasdot calibre.
i’m not irate at being libeled of a federal crime by a fark admin putting my job at risk, it just sorta put their whole site into a light in which it belongs.
December 16th, 2003 at 5:20 pm
hey censorship: i checked out madville.com. looks like they are trying fairly hard to be fark, except without the witty taglines.
however, i was irked by the frame that comes up when you click a link — it says you have to become a member to remove the frame?! that’s highly annoying, and for me, reason enough not to join or visit.
December 16th, 2003 at 7:23 pm
PeriSoft, I was wondering where you had gone. I think I remember that thread, I posted on there too (I said something about threatening the Bush twins with my tool, or something lascivious like that) - thread about Secret Service checking out unreleased Eminem song for potential threat to the President, if I call correctly. Good to see you’re back.
And thanks, down1nit and one2toke for the support.
I’m sure they’ll start accusing you of asskissing next. 
December 16th, 2003 at 7:46 pm
Krantz - man you even asskiss other people in this thread… Jeez. In honor of your ‘tardedness I’m declaring kissasshat a term to decribe a “Krantzstone”.. It’ll be the new kewl fark term.
December 16th, 2003 at 8:02 pm
For all the whiners who are crying about their posts being deleted. Sut up… it’s simple…if you don’t like the site…then go someplace else. If you can’t deal with the fact that it IS his site, and what he says goes…then start your own damn site. Personally I think it’s funny as hell and I log on 3 or 4 times a day.
So all of you little poffs that can’t deal…get bent…the rest of us will enjoy our Fark!
December 16th, 2003 at 8:13 pm
the best was the post revealing the disclosure of the bryant accuser’s personal information.
was on google’s cache, that was ripped out with the quickness but now before the screenshots fetched some mighty dollars on ebay, linked straight from fark.com
December 16th, 2003 at 8:45 pm
Hi guy’s! I got banned for photoshopping a pic of Drew with his face jammed up a fat woman’s butt and posting it on a Cosmiverse thread. You could tell it was him by his Drew Curtis tattoo. I guess it was kind of a crosspost. I did it 4 or 5 times before they 86′ed me. I only wish I got banned for doing something really bad. I still love to read all the posts and stuff, but I can see why it’s probably best that I don’t contribute anymore.
December 16th, 2003 at 8:52 pm
VoiceOfReason
If he doesn’t want the public in then close the door, it’s just one line in a conf file to do it.
December 16th, 2003 at 9:07 pm
Hmmm, I’ve yet to be banned and I’m a troll
I troll every thread that I can start fundie wars in. Dunno why you guys got banned.
December 16th, 2003 at 9:54 pm
I fark. I’ve been banned (once) Had an email chat about the ban with Drew. I understood where I crossed the line. Done with. I did my 24 hours and got over it.
For those of you who are apewing off about hating Drew and hating Fark, fine. So be it, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. I really wonder how many of you took the time to find out why you were banned, or if you just started crying, then called all your friends who you told about Fark and convinced them to all quit going. And for the poor schmuck that was banned 5 times??? forget the vowel and buy a clue buddy.
Funny that a site still gets 2000 submissions a day, exponential more amount of comments, yet it is a site that was so last year. Now thats funny
December 16th, 2003 at 10:19 pm
krantz. word.
it’s just a site. it’s fun. you’ve gotta admit this is fun too.
thanks badmouth.net!
December 16th, 2003 at 11:00 pm
Down1nit….yes. I am finding this fun… I found FARK much more fun but I can no longer partake in the fun because my fun wasn’t appreciated. But yes, thank you badmouth!
December 16th, 2003 at 11:13 pm
All the gay guys just loooove Fark and Drew is sooooo cute!!!!!
December 16th, 2003 at 11:14 pm
Did I just say that???
Me bad!!!!
/back into the closet
December 16th, 2003 at 11:53 pm
God Damn, Krantzstone is such a kissasshat.
December 17th, 2003 at 12:27 am
I have been banned twice. The most recent was for calling the mods tools. They are tools because they deleted my post calling some pro war fuck a tool. He deserved it. I was flamebaited, I didn’t admit it. Signed up again the same day with a different IP and username. The mods need to get some balls. For christsakes, Fark isn’t some site owned by Time Warner/AOL. Get a grip.
December 17th, 2003 at 2:36 am
Complete loonball entry deleted at request of object of stalker’s obsession.
I stand by this decision. Sorry you can’t read it anymore, though.
December 17th, 2003 at 3:47 am
^ WTF?
December 17th, 2003 at 4:34 am
Yeah, this is fun too. Somehow fitting on a site called “badmouth”.net.
And I usually killed them for experience.
As for all you trolls attempting to impersonate me, you’d do a much better job if you made your posts seem even remotely as longwinded as mine, so at least people looking casually at it might mistake your lame trolling for one of my posts.
I’ve seen better trolls on a stock ROM MUD.
December 17th, 2003 at 4:39 am
I second that….. ^ WTF?
December 17th, 2003 at 4:39 pm
…at least they’re not a time traveler sabotaged by aliens, or whatever that story is. Supposedly that guy actually believes it, too.
In a way, I envy people like that.
December 17th, 2003 at 8:33 pm
Well, who hasn’t been stalked and doped up by a LPGA golfer at least once? Too wierd to delete, but I had to take out the telephone numbers. That’s not cool.
December 30th, 2003 at 5:36 am
How to Interpret Friendster Profile Photos
Friendster. Like Scott Baio’s jock at a Playboy party, everyone’s on it. But what’s real and what’s fake? User…
September 30th, 2004 at 8:46 pm
I used to go to fark and madville but the censorship was totally lame. Madville banned me from thier chat for having an opposing view on the war. Its ridiculous. I use Linkswarm now. They are all about free speech and everyone can speek thier minds
September 30th, 2004 at 9:56 pm
Linkswarm is much better than fark.
September 30th, 2004 at 10:38 pm
Fark is LinkSwarm for sissies.
Get tough. Get crazy. Get LinkSwarm!
October 1st, 2004 at 12:08 am
Linkswarm, now with 98% less bullshit.
October 1st, 2004 at 12:18 am
Fark is for seamonkeys
October 1st, 2004 at 12:26 am
I stopped posting on fark after A) finding Linkswarm, and B) because I kept getting into political arguments (usually something I avoid, but the ignorance was so great I couldn’t help myself) with complete and utter morons. I couldn’t even respond to the bullshit child-like name calling properly, because if I started breaking out the insults in return, I’d get banned.
I still skim through the threads on occasion and cannot believe the utter repetitiveness of the place. Things that were not funny at their conception (”clichés”) are beaten soundly to death, every single thread. Maybe that’s just because of the amount of users on the site, maybe not. I just know I can’t stand it.
LINKSWARM OWNS YR SOUL.
October 1st, 2004 at 3:55 am
WERDZ!, Grasshopper!
October 1st, 2004 at 6:47 pm
Linkswarm has cowbell.
The cowbell rings.
Ocelot responds.
November 15th, 2004 at 9:07 pm
I have filed my grievance with Drew Curtis, here…
http://members.cox.net/cowicide/fark.html
Go to fark and link to it and you’ll surely be banned. On the other hand, you’ll see me link to my site all the time, even in my profile. Why don’t they ban me, you ask? Because they fear me and they know I would F\/CK THIER WORLD UP.
Everyone knows hardcore conservatives can’t fight, that’s why they weasel out so often in service to their country when duty calls. Moderates like McCain aren’t really hardcore conservatives so I don’t want to hear any lip.
Take a hard look at the Bush admin’s “military” past when it comes to serving in actual COMBAT… Bush? Cheney? Rumsfeld? Pussies. The Fark conservate-slant drones are no different… PUSSIES.
They ban some of you because they don’t fear you.
January 28th, 2005 at 3:22 am
“I got banned from Fark. Five times. I joined under different aliases with different web/email addresses, and made no reference to my original alias, and still I got banned again. Drew bans you for anything.”
read the Fark rules tard, you tried to re-enter on a different name/e-mail… going around your first bans… duh.
and I remember my2cents… say what you want, but you were always an attention whore, that’s probably why you’re not welcome on Fark, just guess’n. OMG, they BANNED ME!! WTF ?! DREW SUXORS!! FARK SUX!!…
wahhhha…. it’s his site, why can’t he do what he wants ?
March 13th, 2005 at 7:01 pm
Fark is absolutely going to the dogs with their overbearing, tantrum throwing, childish mods. It’s to the point where you think twice about voicing ANY distinct opinion.
So many valid comments get banned that to be blind to it is to be naive to an extreme.
May 8th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
beer the Cletus
September 19th, 2005 at 3:59 pm
Fuck Fark! The moderators are douchebags and Drew is a clueless dipshit.
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:18 am
fark rocks… it’s a fun, diverse and funny forum. If your banned it’s because you were an asshat.
And what’s even better, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to go there.
I learned that I cannot help but go back.
Yours:
G.W. Bush
President of the U.S of A.
December 11th, 2005 at 11:58 pm
Damn it, I got banned for nothing. Fark.com sucks.
February 7th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Dumbass
/tag
LMAO @ the whiners!! Get lives for ****’s sake. It’s the internet ….. it’s not even REAL!! You poor, poor, lifeless cretins.
Nobody gets banned for “nothing”. Even IF you got banned because a certain mod had a hangover that morning, or because Sonic got their breakfast order wrong, or whatever ….. then THAT’S why you got banned! And if that actually is the way Fark operates,which quite frankly I doubt, then so be it. It’s a private site, it’s generally free, and they can run it anydamnway they feel they want to.
The whining and crying is most amusing ….. reminiscent of the usual drivel one hears from someone who gets banned from a forum to the relief of everyone else. Good riddance.
Long live Fark
February 9th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
I think some of the “whiners” had a point, though. I got banned for 24 hours for posting something I’ve seen posted a hundred times before. It never happened again, not because I’ve been more careful but because some of the mods just aren’t good, imo. Some mods just seem a bit out of control and it sucks to witness it on a site like Fark.
Don’t even let me get started on the Krantzstoners. I feel vomit creeping up everytime Wil posts because I know there’ll be a bunch of kissass posts that follow (not to say Wil’s not cool).
Anyway, yay Fark or whatever.
March 29th, 2006 at 7:09 pm
Drew Curtis is a troll.
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:50 am
I hear alot of words like beauty, handsomeness, incredibly chiseled
features. To me that’s a kind of vanity, a sort of self-absorption, that I try to steer clear of.
I dig the bungee. That’s how I live my life. I grip it, and I rip it.
I wasn’t like every other kid, you know, who dreams about being an astronaut. I was always more interested in what bark was made out of on a tree.
Richard Gere’s a real hero of mine. Sting. Sting is another person who’s a hero. The music that he’s made over the years, I don’t really listen to it. But the fact that he’s making it, I respect that.
I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I’m selling? No.
Do I know what I’m doing today? No. But I’m here, and I’m gonna give it my best shot.
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:53 am
Hmm…
I hear a lot of words like beauty, handsomeness, incredibly chiseled
features. To me that’s a kind of vanity, a sort of self-absorption,
that I
try to steer clear of.
I dig the bungee. That’s how I live my life. I grip it, and I rip it.
I wasn’t like every other kid, you know, who dreams about being an
astronaut. I was always more interested in what bark was made out of on
a
tree.
Richard Gere’s a real hero of mine. Sting. Sting is another person
who’s a
hero. The music that he’s made over the years, I don’t really listen to
it.
But the fact that he’s making it, I respect that.
I care desperately about what I do. Do I know what product I’m selling?
No.
Do I know what I’m doing today? No. But I’m here, and I’m gonna give it
my
best shot.
October 2nd, 2006 at 1:07 am
it’s only a movie.
…in through the nose, out through the mouth.
repeat.
December 30th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Ahem,
I know that this is late, like about 3 years after this interview came out. Just want you to know that I was banned, not for what I did, but because my handle was “close” to mytwocents! I wrote Drew asking for an explaination. My point being that computers can tell the difference between names that sound alike, but are spelled differently. Drew told me to pick a different name. I never did. Fark took up too much of my time.
So, since this is my first witness of the “real” mytwocents, who caused my bannation, I am curious: what exactly did you write, sweetie? Don’t know if you ever will get down to this level of comments again, since you last wrote on December 16, 2003. Any former or current Farkers can comment after this. If you could possibly showing how to link to old comment threads by her (Drew said that “she” was an annoying troll in his reply), that would be mucho apprecioto. I am assuming that the comments are still archived, and not erased.
January 10th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
April 1st, 2007 at 7:55 pm
May 3rd, 2007 at 10:55 pm
May 14th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
This old interview makes me sad. It’s from before Fark sold out every principle you see espoused in the article.
RIP
Fark.com
2001 - 2007
You’ll get over it
May 15th, 2007 at 5:04 am
I wasn’t banned from Fark, but I got pretty sick of getting “time-outs” courtesy of power-mad moderators. Some of these time-outs were for really stupid and trivial things.
So I just left.
I have no issues with Drew…it’s just that there needs to be some accountability. Appoint moderators who will actually be FAIR. Because most of those time-outs I got just were not fair–I hadn’t posted anything in violation of the rules!
I can understand the power-tripping. I was just made a moderator of a Christian forum, and it’s VERY tempting to start editing or deleting things you don’t like!
May 31st, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Thats why javlink.net is way better no censorship post and view whatever liberal or conservative view you have.
June 6th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Fark is all about arguing for the sake of arguing so every thread devolves into semantics. A recent thread about Filesharing and the RIAA contained the exact same “You people are stealing!” comments you might have read five years ago. Why? Not because the poster actually cares but because someone will always bite that bait.
The mods pick trolling headlines to encourage the highest number of pageviews. This is where the notion of a left/right wing slant comes from. They just pick whatever will provoke the biggest reaction now.
September 5th, 2007 at 4:37 am
This article shows that no matter how much things change, they always remain the same. Comments from 2003 complaining about the site are comments still being made complaining about the site in the exact same way. It just becomes clear that Fark.com sold out a LONG time ago.
Even worse, it’s so sad that it took until 2007 before someone even bothered to document the proof of Fark abuse and Shadowbans. http://ergh.org/farkdeceit/
Go to http://bannination.com instead.
September 12th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
I would never do this, but I am so pissed off at the horrible censorship at Fark I want to cut Drew’s tongue out so bad - SO BAD, so he can see what it feels like. This isn’t about trolling, crap flooding, or breaking the rules, this is about dangerous thought policing going on there. Drew, you will piss off the wrong guy one day, and you will pay for allowing this dangerous suppression of free speech. YOU SUCK.
November 7th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
December 22nd, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Why do people waste their time on fark? I have never seen such a hypocritical bunch of ignorant fools than the censor-happy dolts who inhabit fark. People like Drew bitch whine and moan about the media, but make ass-loads of money doing the EXACT same thing that they complain about.
March 17th, 2008 at 8:39 am
May 13th, 2008 at 6:23 am
Curtis is a fraud who empowers his admins and mods to use underhanded methods to scoop up money for the site.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:43 pm