Suck.com

Suck.com was one of the earliest ad-supported content sites on the Internet. It featured daily editorial content on a great variety of topics, including politics and pop-culture. It was geared towards a Generation X audience. The website's motto was "A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun". Despite not publishing new content since 2001, the site remained online until December 2018.^[1]

The site[]

Suck.com was initiated during 1995 by writer Joey Anuff and editor Carl Steadman who created daily comically cynical commentary with a self-obsessed and satiric theme. The writing was accentuated by the art of cartoonist Terry Colon. During 1996, they included the writing talent of Heather Havrilesky, who provided the sarcastic comments of her supposed alter ego Polly Esther in their column, titled Filler.

The name of the website was chosen as a domain name with possibly offensive connotations though apparently not enough to be disallowed by Network Solutions, which controlled the InterNIC system for the distribution of domain names before ICANN acquired that authority. The name also described the nature of "news aggregator" sites that "sucked" stories from the internet and published them in magazine like formats.

In 1997, Suck published a compilation of their most popular essays in Suck: Worst-Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising and the Internet (ISBN 1-888869-27-5).

Style[]

Other than the distinctive artwork of , the website also had many features common to its articles. The main text of each article was restricted to a table only 200 pixels wide. Most articles would feature links within the flow of the content rather than as in labeled footnotes or references, which was less common then than it would become a few years later.

Regular columns[]

• Hit & Run — A link-driven summary of recent events.
• Filler — A weekly self-deprecating satire of cultural pretension and dating in post-modern times.

Closure[]

In July 2000, after a decrease of Internet investment, suck.com merged with Feed Magazine to create Automatic Media. Their concept was to streamline their operations and collaborate on boutique operations with low staffing costs. Their joint project Plastic.com was founded with only 4 staffed employees. Despite the faithful following, and a combined reader base of more than 1 million, Automatic Media ended in June 2001. On June 8, 2001, Suck.com declared that they were "Gone Fishin'" indefinitely,^[2] and the site ceased to publish new content. Regarding the indefinite hiatus, co-founder Joey Anuff said, "It was a shame. On the other hand...it’s shocking how long Suck lasted."^[3]

During the autumn of 2015, software developer Mark MacDonald began serializing the website's archive in an email newsletter, which is sent on a daily basis 20 years-to-the-day after original publication on Suck.com.^[4]

Notable staff[]

Staff[]

• Carl Steadman, co-founder, writer, and editor, became the owner of plastic.com.
• Joey Anuff, co-founder, writer, and editor.
• Tim Cavanaugh, editor in chief from 1998 to 2001, became web editor of the Los Angeles Times opinion page, and then a contributor to Reason magazine.
• Ana Marie Cox, executive editor (who wrote as Ann O'Tate), was later the writer of the popular blog Wonkette and wrote for Time.com
• Owen Thomas, copy editor and managing editor at Valleywag.

Contributors[]

• Steve Bodow
• Rogers Cadenhead
• Mark Dery
• Michael Gerber
• Nick Gillespie
• Heather Havrilesky
• Josh Ozersky
• Tom Spurgeon
• Jake Tapper^[5]

References[]

External links[]

• Suck.com at the Wayback Machine (archived December 15, 2018)