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“Fark” redirects here. For other uses, see FARK. Fark.com is a community website created by Drew Curtis allowing users to comment on a daily batch of news articles and other items from various websites. Links are submitted by Fark members, which are then approved for posting on the main page by admins. TotalFark.com is a premium version of Fark. Members are able to see, and comment on, all submitted articles (not just “greenlighted” articles on the main page). TotalFark requires a US$5 monthly fee to join, unlike “Fark Lite,” or “PartialFark,” which is free. Members of TotalFark have established an online community and frequently participate in “TotalFark discussions,” which are submitted links not meant to be greenlighted, but rather commented on and discussed by TotalFark members only. 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, or GIMP) to manipulate an image provided by the creator of the contest, or less commonly, according to a set theme as set out in written form. The image is usually manipulated for humorous effect, but sometimes is edited to create an aesthetically-pleasing image or to showcase a poster's image manipulation skill.
History Originally, the web server on Drew Curtis' fark.com domain contained no content, except for an image of a squirrel with large testicles*. Later, in 1999, the site introduced what would evolve into its current format, as a way for Curtis to share what he considered interesting news postings with his friends rather than sending them numerous emails. Features such as link submission and forums have slowly been added over the years, as popularity and participation grew. The term “farking” was originally intended as a euphemism for the verb, “fuck.” However, it has also come to refer to websites that have stopped responding due to a high load after being linked to from fark.com. Particularly small websites referenced by Fark headlines are often “farked,” meaning that their servers have received so much traffic that they have stopped responding completely (see also: Slashdot effect). Fark and Something Awful have been engaged in a friendly rivalry of sorts, culminating in a Photoshop Contest between the two sites, judged by celebrity Wil Wheaton. Contrary to popular belief, there actually is no real rivalry between Fark.com and Something Awful. This rivalry was propagated mostly as an inside joke by Lowtax, the owner of Something Awful. The joke comes from the fact that Drew and Lowtax are close friends, and that Fark.com and Something Awful share some of the same readership. There are certain sites which Fark.com will not link to, such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, or Ananova.com. The reason for not linking to The New York Times and The Washington Post is that these sites require a user registration. Submitting any link which requires registration is frowned upon by the Fark community. Members can post links to The New York Times or The Washington Post in the forums during a discussion, but may not submit these links directly through the queue. Fark does not link to Ananova because the website had posted Fark's headlines without giving credit, in addition to posting many inaccurate articles. Ananova was receiving a great deal of traffic due to Fark's links while refusing to acknowledge Fark and reciprocate the gesture. While Ananova denied using Fark's headlines, Drew specifically put a few “fake” links on the main page which Ananova then posted. Drew then decided not to accept links from their website. Fark has often been criticized for running headlines and articles that are politically biased. However, they are accused of having both a conservative and a liberal bias. Drew has stated that rather than trying to keep it in the middle, admins enjoy running both far-left and far-right articles. The top four hated “groups” on Fark.com are (in no particular order) PETA, Catholic priests, the French, and Duke University, according to founder Drew Curtis. Fark has been accused of selling preferential placement of story links on the main page. Drew responded to this by saying he had considered selling links he was already going to post to servers that could handle the bandwidth, such as CNN or ABC. He claims the only type of links that are paid are some of the adult content (usually “boobies”) links, and are clearly labelled as being sponsored. He also claims that thus far all sponsored links have been clearly labelled adult content links to ensure the links are trojan-free, spam-free, and spyware-free. Adult content links that are not labelled as sponsored links are not paid for and were submitted by individual users. According to Drew, there is currently nothing in the works to sell links to sites such as AP, CNN, or anyone else. During a discussion in a forum on such accusations, the moderators would repeatedly delete comments that questioned whether this was for or against Fark.com philosophy. Many people also complain that Fark will not publish their link to their main page or “greenlight” their articles. All of the links submitted on Fark.com are submitted by individual users and are approved based on content by administrators. Articles that are posted to the main page are selected based on the content of the article, how funny the headline is, and sometimes how much bandwidth usage the site can handle. The administrators will never greenlight an article because they were emailed and asked to do so. The number of registered Fark accounts surpassed 300,000 on August 19, 2006. Tags The signature of Fark has always been the tags given to stories by submitters—e.g. stupid, interesting, dumbass, etc.—that are displayed prominently alongside often witty headlines and a link to a forum to discuss that specific article. Articles discussing Wil Wheaton are given the “Wheaton” tag. Articles discussing Christopher Walken are given the “Walken” tag, though Walken has never participated on Fark. Tags that say “advice” or “survey” are used for discussion threads where comments are often voted upon. So many headlines were contributed about the state of Florida that it received its own tag as well. Tags that say “photoshop,” “audioedit” or “videoedit” are used for threads where digital content is edited for a humorous or artistic effect. Tags that say “boobies” or “weeners” are used to post adult content or discussions, although recently “weeners” have faded away almost entirely and “boobies” have been diverted to Foobies.com, in order for Fark.com to be more acceptable to a wider variety of advertisers. At the early stages of Foobies.com, “weeners” would appear occasionally. Sometimes, “Foobies.com” links that were considered safe for work would appear on the main page. Finally, the news tag (and newsflash for even more important news) is used for news which is a matter of important breaking news, and an email is sent to the administrators notifying them that someone has submitted a “Newsflash.” Members are told to use this tag very sparingly and only for matters of extremely important breaking news. All of the links that are posted on Fark are submitted by users and “greenlighted” by unpaid administrators or Drew Curtis himself. The administrators are personal friends of Drew, as are the moderators. The tags next to the articles represent the submitter's feelings on that article and do not necessarily represent the views of Fark or the administrator who greenlighted the article. Next to an article on Fark appears a number in parentheses, such as: (105). Clicking on this number goes to the discussion about the article. The number in parentheses is the number of comments users have made. The discussion part of the thread is where readers are encouraged to comment, discuss, and often argue the content of the link. When the number of comments accumulate to various larger numbers, and the rate of new posts is considered to be faster than the ability to read them all, the number changes into something humorous such as “(∞),” “(ℵ0),” “(π)” or even “(√-1).” Farkisms and clichés Fark's comments threads are often smattered with “Farkisms” or “FARK.com clichés” (essentially, in-jokes) which are an integral part of the community culture and used in myriad discussions at the website, regardless of whether they apply to the topic at hand. Many of these clichés are not exclusive to Fark. A few examples include: Filters The Fark.com forums use filters which replace profane or otherwise offensive text by euphemisms. Some examples are given below: Because the filters operate on any occurrence of the target strings, even if spaces are included, it is possible to post text that will invoke the filters in unintended ways. For example, the text “it's a bit chilly out” will appear as “it's a biatchilly out.” See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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