The Best Page in the Universe

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
The Best Page in the Universe
URL http://maddox.xmission.com/
Commercial? No
Type of site Satire
Fratire
Registration None
Owner Maddox
Created by Maddox (George Ouzounian)
Launched 1997
Current status Active

The Best Page in the Universe is a personal satirical humor website created by George Ouzounian, better known as Maddox, of Salt Lake City, Utah. Launched in 1997 without any high expectations, the website became highly popular by word of mouth; as of May 28, 2009, Xmission.com, which hosts The Best Page in the Universe, had an Alexa rank of 15,850[1] and has had more than 233 million visits. TheBestPageInTheUniverse.net, which works as an alternative domain for Maddox's website, had an Alexa rank of 29,313.[2]

Contents

[edit] History

"The Best Page in the Universe" originated from a text document that Maddox wrote in 1996[3] aptly named "fifty things that piss me off!" He gave the list to several people on EFnet's #coders, and the positive response led him to create the website.[4]

Maddox decided to name his site "The Best Page in the Universe" despite his knowledge that Yahoo! blocked sites with the phrase "the best" in the title from inclusion in its search engine.[5]

On August 29, 2008, "The Best Page in the Universe" celebrated "11 years of literary genius".

[edit] Content

In addition to their written content, many of Maddox's articles include illustrations to portray a point. Past images include drawings of elderly people being fired to the Sun, hippies being killed, Maddox's testicles (drawn larger than a basketball).

Maddox maintains a section in which he criticizes hate mail his website has generated. When posting his replies he breaks the e-mail down and ridicules points which use fallacious logic and also corrects linguistic errors. He also runs an online store which sells merchandise such as stickers and apparel that bear phrases used in his articles.[6]

[edit] Format

The website's layout is minimalistic primarily in order to save on bandwidth costs, though Maddox also wishes to protest many contemporary websites which contain "fancy HTML" but lack in substantial content. He uses large, light-colored text against a black background to reduce strain on the eyes and has compared reading black text on a white background to "staring at a light bulb."[4]

The page is headed with an image of Maddox's face superimposed over a bust of Che Guevara. In the image, he is wearing an eye patch and donning a beret emblazoned with the Jolly Roger. Maddox uses this image as a parody of the revolutionary icon, and does not proclaim to be either a socialist or communist, saying that Che Guevara is remembered as "Che the revolutionary," not "Che the pinko."[4] Instead, he often proclaims himself to be a pirate, and typically portrays himself as such in his articles and artwork.

Maddox deliberately keeps his site free of advertisements. He does not specifically ask for donations from his readers, though he does accept them.[7] In an article regarding plagiarism of his material, Maddox wrote, "The reason this site doesn't have advertisements on it is because I want to say whatever I want without having to worry about offending advertisers."

[edit] Hidden pages

Maddox's website is also known to contain several "hidden pages," many of which are unfinished works or first drafts of articles that were moved around. Maddox Addicts, a fan site of Maddox, posted a large list of them.[8]

[edit] Other media

Maddox has shifted the website's focus to comics and books, including The Alphabet of Manliness, published in June 2006, and updates started coming in less frequently than before. Updates to his site have become so infrequent that their non-appearance has become an ongoing joke.

He recently launched a competition for people to send him cartoons about himself or his website, most of which are attacks about emails for "more updates." Later, he parodied this himself by stating that now that he's finished with the comic book, he'd be able to "Not update the site more regularly." Entries so far include a depiction of Maddox leaping out of a computer monitor and smashing two fans' faces together and a comic strip of a boy checking the website for new content only to find a cartoon of himself that he had posted ten seconds earlier.[9][10][11]

[edit] Controversy

A self-described concerned mother named Beth Robbins founded a website called Mothers Against Maddox[12] in late 2004. The website's slogan is "Help Us Fight and Finally Shut Down the Most Hateful Site on the Internet" and serves as a forum to organize shutting down the Xmission.com website with a petition-backed court order.[13] When Maddox wrote about it in the aforementioned Websense article, including a link to the original GeoCities.com website, Mothers Against Maddox was inundated with visitors and repeatedly exceeded its bandwidth limit. In response, Maddox hosted a mirror in order for fans of his writing to view it without disrupting the Mothers Against Maddox website's hosting arrangement.[14] Shortly after drafting the petition, Robbins decided to make a digitized copy available on the website PetitionOnline.com. Fans promptly flooded the petition, many posting vulgar comments to vindicate his emotive appeal to the youth demographic. Maddox said that he signed the petition, as "nobody gives a shit." The petition was eventually deactivated.[15]

Maddox states that he received emails with similar viewpoints as expressed by Mothers Against Maddox. Such messages often contain sentences expressing a dislike for his viewpoints and/or that his site is a bad influence on their children. Maddox responded by saying that if his site offends people, they should not read it and "it's not my job to be your children's guardian."

On October 27, 2007 CNN ran a story about Mothers Against Drunk Driving asking another organization, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, to cease using "Mothers Against" in the name of their organization. CNN went on to cite various other organizations that use "Mothers Against" in their name with Mothers Against Maddox being one of its examples.[16]

[edit] References

  1. ^ XMission.com ranking on Alexa.com
  2. ^ Thebestpageintheuniverse.net's rating on Alexa.com
  3. ^ "It's a man's world." Salon
  4. ^ a b c Maddox. "The Best Page in the Universe: FAQ"
  5. ^ Maddox. "100 million faces rocked". The Best Page in the Universe. March 18, 2005
  6. ^ Maddox. The Best Store in the Universe.
  7. ^ The Best Page In The Universe: FAQ
  8. ^ "Maddox Addicts :: Secrets". Maddox Addicts
  9. ^ Maddox. "Holy shit! I'm writing a book!". February 19, 2005. The Best Page in the Universe. (Archive.org).
  10. ^ Kiyan, Randy. "Week of 11/01/05". The Best Page in the Universe. November 1, 2005.
  11. ^ Horus. "Weekly Submission". The Best Page in the Universe. November 2005.
  12. ^ Mothers Against Maddox
  13. ^ "The Best Page in the Universe a side-splitting romp through sarcasm and vulgarity." Gateway.
  14. ^ Maddox mirror of the Mothers Against Maddox page
  15. ^ The no Maddox petition at Petitiononline.com
  16. ^ "CNN Article - Group mad at MADD". http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2007/10/27/koch.madd.vs.illegals.cnn. Retrieved on 2007-10-27. 

[edit] External links

Sister project Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Best Page in the Universe
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_Page_in_the_Universe"
Personal tools
Languages