World's Funniest Website: Somethingawful.com

The Internet is a breeding ground for the socially inept, fetishes that are both weird and disturbing, poor grammar, and unaccountable opinions. That's the basis for the hilarious website, Something Awful (www.somethingawful.com). Their slogan: "The Internet Makes you Stupid".

The name Something Awful brings to mind a website that might feature pictures of bloody road accidents and crime scene photos. In actuality, they're a fairly sophisticated satire site. Something Awful has picked up a reputation, for drawing attention to and generally mocking certain social corners of the Internet. Shitty bands, fetishists, fan fiction writers and pseudo science nuts may one day end up featured in one of their articles, carefully picked apart and left exposed for the world to see.

Something awful features several regular writers, and also hosts a forum of individuals that often participate in the longer features. For instance, the regular feature called Comedy Goldmine will often request funny stories or artwork from it's forum members, then features the best of the received submissions. To give you an idea of some of the subject matter, previous Goldmines have included haikus based on the subject "Sex With the Elderly".

Joining the Something Awful forums costs a one time fee of $9.95, charged to recoup the cost of their $2,200 dollar a month bandwidth bills. It sucks that you have to pay, but it keeps the site going AND generally keeps out random riff-raff from the forum. Something Awful has over 68,000 active members. Forum members are referred to as "goons".

If you're not interested in the forums, you can still view the rest of the website for free. A few of my favorite features include:

Photoshop Phriday

Every week, the Something Awful forum "goons" tackle a new subject that allows them to flex they're collective Photoshop muscles. Something Awful features the best humor related Photoshops I've ever seen, hands down. The feature appears every Friday. Be sure to check out older Photoshop Phridays in their archive. I recommend "Unlikely Movie Prequels", " Will They Fly a Plane Into Our House?", and "That Creepy Bastard".

Awful Movie Review

Once a week or so, some poor bastard has to watch a horrible, horrible movie. The movies reviewed are generally available to anyone with a Netflix account, and feature titles like "Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life". Movies are so terrible, they're reviewed on a negative scale of 50.

Your Band Sucks

In what has to be my favorite feature, Dr. David Thorpe picks apart just about every popular band, then receives and displays a copious amount of hateful, profanity filled death threats from rabid fans. Be sure to read "The Field Guide to North American Hipsters".

There you have it, the funniest website on the Internet. Admittedly the humor is more suited for twenty-somethings then your dad. In fact, if you're old you should forget you read this article and not visit the website. Unless you're "cool" old. But what are the odds of that, right?