The Best of the Web
July 9, 2007 11:00 PM   Subscribe

 


The Internet is crap.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 11:11 PM on July 9, 2007


I am finally convinced that this Internet thing is a fad that will blow over.
posted by Deep Dish at 11:24 PM on July 9, 2007


Arnold's Thule belt buckle best Time cover lately.
posted by hortense at 11:27 PM on July 9, 2007


No MeFi? This list sucks. no, really
posted by zardoz at 11:43 PM on July 9, 2007


meh.
posted by stavrogin at 12:07 AM on July 10, 2007


i've heard of last.fm and opensecrets.org ... and these others are ...?
posted by pyramid termite at 12:21 AM on July 10, 2007


TMZ.com made the 25 Sites We Can't Live Without list and metafilter.com didn't?

Your favourite list of websites sucks.
posted by chuckdarwin at 12:26 AM on July 10, 2007


Who the hell came up with this list? Personally, I think they should just post a link to del.ico.us/tag/awesome and be done with it.
posted by mullingitover at 1:04 AM on July 10, 2007


LinkedIn is one of the top 50 websites of the year? *checks date* Yep, 2007. *asplodes*
posted by TheDonF at 1:38 AM on July 10, 2007


Best of worst.
posted by psmealey at 1:54 AM on July 10, 2007


Fuck, I can't believe my MySpace page got overlooked again. Back to the drawing board, I guess.
posted by psmealey at 1:56 AM on July 10, 2007 [2 favorites]


They list Second Life in the list of worst websites but don't mention the Second Life website, just Second Life itself. It doesn't seem to fit.

It felt good to finally get that off my chest ;)
posted by nthdegx at 2:23 AM on July 10, 2007


Best of worst.
posted by psmealey at 1:54 AM


Time Magazine, fat and indolent from decades of catering to intellectually emasculated suburbanites, manages to slowly reach over and scratch the obvious boils on the ass of the Internet: Myspace, eHarmony, and Second Life. Here's a fuckin' lollipop for pointing out the obvious, you disgusting bloated corpse of America's once-proud literary culture. Next time try a little honest self-reflection and throw yourselves on that list as well. I'd say I'm surprised you showed the restraint necessary not to put yourselves on the best-of, but Time's editors lacking balls wouldn't even merit a sidebar in their glossy dishrag.

Here's my question: what about the true worst of the worst? The websites whose owners ought to be flogged in public? Whose userbase ought to be chemically castrated? That's right, I'm talking about Metafilter. How can Metafilter possibly be left off a worst websites of 2007 list? Did Time somehow feel that even mentioning the existence of Metafilter would be going too far - like name-dropping a child molester while attending a kindergarten graduation?

Time has repeatedly shown itself too weak-willed to confront or even report the ugly truths of life (sole exception: "You" really were the person of the year, God help us all), so I could see this being the case. Maybe Matt paid them off - it wouldn't be the first time he's bribed his way out of worst of lists.

Honestly, we don't know what (or with this being Time, if) they were thinking when they made this terrifying omission - the only thing we know is that the searing light of Metafilter's hideous sucking needs to be held aloft - as a clarion call to the world at large:

Rectify this mistake. With chainsaws.
posted by Official Mefi Head Complainer at 2:29 AM on July 10, 2007 [11 favorites]


How can Metafilter possibly be left off a worst websites of 2007 list?

Metafilter's worstness cannot. Be. Contained. To 2007. It is a worstness for all time. And that's why I love it.
posted by psmealey at 2:38 AM on July 10, 2007


Eponysterical!
posted by mullingitover at 3:10 AM on July 10, 2007


So I finally went to this Last.fm site, and hoping for musical enlightenment typed in the first 'favourite' that popped into my head. Result:

If you like Will Oldham, you might also like:

* Palace Brothers
* Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
* Palace Music
* Palace
* Songs: Ohia
* Bonnie 'Prince' Billy & Matt Sweeney

So so far I'm not that impressed
posted by Flashman at 3:13 AM on July 10, 2007


At last! The internet is as dull as Time Magazine!!!
posted by criticalbill at 4:01 AM on July 10, 2007


July 2007 Presents TIME Online's Top 6 Servers:

time.com
sphere.com
adsonar.com
timeinc.net
insightexpressai.com
atwola.com
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:49 AM on July 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


OMG WTF TEH 2007 IZ NOT OVR YET.
posted by punkfloyd at 5:52 AM on July 10, 2007


Isn't this really the Time/AOL list of best websites?
posted by exogenous at 6:05 AM on July 10, 2007


Worst of the Web: any long list of crap on a Time, Inc. website that requires endless clicking of next buttons to get through the list.

Dear Time, Inc.: Eat a booger.
posted by Mcable at 6:16 AM on July 10, 2007


Before I clicked the link I hoped upon hope that Time's invigoration for all things internet had finally compelled it to scrap that "Click next for EACH! NEW! ITEM!" format. Seriously, I looked down the long dark hallway of my next fifty clicks and did not like what I saw there. Having given up after three, I am very glad to have stepped back from that ledge.
posted by hermitosis at 7:12 AM on July 10, 2007


mullingitover: Don't encourage it. ;)
posted by wierdo at 7:24 AM on July 10, 2007


Metafilter: Bitching about someone else's list without putting up one of your own.
posted by Revvy at 7:25 AM on July 10, 2007


A caveat against going too far with your hipster Time-magazine-is-the-SuX0Rs rants: there is, in my experience, nobody at Time magazine who thinks they're hacking through uncharted terrain with their journalistic machetes.

For example, this (tongue-in-cheek, I realize) bit of froth?:

Here's a fuckin' lollipop for pointing out the obvious

My old editor at the Canadian version of Time couldn't have said it better himself. As he once explained to me with a wry pseudo-intellectual smile, Time's house style is "sustained obviousness."

I wrote for Time for about a year. It was surreal in many ways. One of them was how even people who claimed to loathe Time still invariably quoted from their lists of "The X Most Important Gewgaws of All Time." Which lists were, yes, at least as arbitrary as you've long imagined, but no less influential for it. The phrase "Named one of Time magazine's 50 Best Websites of 2007" will be used to pigeonhole most of the stuff in this link for years to come, even as the people trafficking in the shorthand decry Time's taste as wilfully milquetoast.

This is what Time is: an insipid shrine of what middle America just recently realized and is glad to have confirmed, and the official mainstream media sanctioning body of what urban hipsters got tired of a little while back and are still kind of tickled to see mentioned in Time magazine. (These two things are often the same; see, for example, Second Life.)
posted by gompa at 7:52 AM on July 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


TMZ is wholly owned by Time Warner/AOL/CNN (or whatever their corp name is now).

I wouldn't be surprised if others on that list were too---synergy or bad journalism, you decide.
posted by amberglow at 8:12 AM on July 10, 2007


Lists! We need more lists!
posted by MarshallPoe at 8:28 AM on July 10, 2007


Metafilter: Bitching about someone else's list without putting up one of your own.

There's nothing stopping us doing an end of year best-of list. Could be organised via MeTa.
posted by nthdegx at 8:58 AM on July 10, 2007


This is what Time is: an insipid shrine of what middle America just recently realized and is glad to have confirmed

I agree. But wait, that means the only value this FPP has is as Point-and-laugh-Filter.
posted by psmealey at 9:06 AM on July 10, 2007


It's only July, right?
posted by stevil at 9:12 AM on July 10, 2007


One would hope a magazine called TIME would understand that seven months into a year is not necessarily the best time to publish a list of the best websites of the whole year.

But then, one would also hope a website as poorly designed as TIME's would just stay away from making such lists altogether.
posted by Saellys at 9:38 AM on July 10, 2007


It's like relying on the town crier for TV reviews.
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:53 AM on July 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


Despicable to hear so many bellyaching "Persons of the Year" biting the hand that feeds them. That's gratitude for ya.
posted by hermitosis at 11:32 AM on July 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


Starwars.com? Sheesh.
posted by bardic at 12:46 PM on July 10, 2007


I never understood the Time hatred. Sure it's middle of the road stuff, and I wouldn't trust its grasp on the zeitgeist - but it's a mainstream American magazine that occasionally writes about other countries, even ones that aren't Iraq. I've even seen it be critical about the US executive prior to 2006. Is my snarkfilter slipping in this regard?
posted by Sparx at 2:55 PM on July 10, 2007


TMZ and Facebook on the 25 Sites We Can't Live Without?!

Good Lord.
posted by misha at 4:51 PM on July 10, 2007 [1 favorite]


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