Get your schadenfreude here

July 28, 2009 6:53 AM

Recently, there have been a host of websites that delight in exposing the inanity and stupidity of our society. There is the granddaddy, Overheard in New York, which recounts silly conversations heard in the Big Apple, as well as a host of similar sites. There are now a variety of such websites, dedicated to different aspects of our society.

First, there are the ones targeted at different groups: STFU, Marrieds, STFU, Parents, STFU, Believers, and My Roommate is Such a Dick.

Then, there are the ones that expose the silliness and inanity in our communications: Texts From Last Night, My Drunk Texts, Passive Aggressive Notes, and Lamebook.

Relationships and sex loom large as well: Disgusting People I Have Made Out With, Why My Ex Sucks, and I Bang the Worst Dudes.

Finally, there is just plain bad luck or failure: F My Life and FAIL Blog.

Bonus: Awkward Family Photos and Hot Chicks With Douchebags

posted by reenum (51 comments total)

Okay, granted, the title "Disgusting People I Have Made Out With" probably should have clued me in, but that site needs a NSFW warning. Geeze.
posted by MidAtlantic at 6:57 AM on July 28 [1 favorite has favorites]

Everything is subject to mockery. I'm quite fond of Ugliest Tattoos.
posted by scratch at 7:01 AM on July 28

Overheard before
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 7:02 AM on July 28 [1 favorite has favorites]

Does what it says on the tin. That's quite a collection of schadenfreude-laden sites.

Agreed with MidAtlantic that "Disgusting eople" needs an NSFW tag. I expected pimply or passed-out drunk or with bad teeth, not a bondage photo.
posted by notashroom at 7:04 AM on July 28 [1 favorite has favorites]

Needs healthcare discussion highlights.
posted by Free word order! at 7:05 AM on July 28

The man who feel asleep - conversations overheard on the London Underground, since 2002.
posted by MuffinMan at 7:11 AM on July 28 [1 favorite has favorites]

Psychotic Letters From Men is another good one.
posted by buriednexttoyou at 7:15 AM on July 28

Oh geez, a few of those posts on STFU, Marrieds are kind of pathetic. It seems the joke is often little more than "look at them overposting on their facebook profile!" Why the hell is that worth making a fuss about?

Seriously, people care way too much about stuff like that. Friend of mine had his Twitter account linked to his Facebook and was retweeting the Iran election, so his whole Facebook was full of that stuff for a while. It was a little silly, but the cussing out he received over it was way out of proportion. When you can block what people are saying just do that and leave them be.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 7:18 AM on July 28 [1 favorite has favorites]

Two I'm fond of:

Not Always Right is a collection of interactions between store employees and their customers.

It's only updated annually these days, but Computer Stupidities is a collection of "dumb tech support callers."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:19 AM on July 28 [1 favorite has favorites]

So one of my friends sent me an IM a few months ago saying "You've got to check out this hilarious site" with the link to Awkward Family Photos. I was in the middle of a conference call, so I just saved the link to a document of things to check out later.

Two days later, work was pretty slow so I pulled up the document and decided to check out the hilarious site that my friend sent me.

I read the first two photo captions and am laughing pretty hard at that point. I scroll down to the third picture and I see a picture of my aunt and her boyfriend staring at me. NO. FUCKING. WAY. I zoom in on the picture just to REALLY check out the faces. Yes, that is 100% without a doubt my mother's sister. But maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me. I call my mom's cell phone:

Me: MOM! Do you have computer access?

Mom: No, I'm at work right now. Why? What's wrong?

Me: As soon as you get home, check your email. I think your sister is on this website filled with funny pictures.

I NEED confirmation that I'm not crazy, so I decide to call my sister, who just happens to be home and on a computer.

Me: Pull up this website!! *gives her URL*

Sister: What is this?

Me: Just look at the picture, read the caption, then scroll down and repeat.

Sister: Um.. ok. Ha ha. Pretty funny, but I still don't see OHMIGOD THAT'S AUNT name redacted!

Me: I THOUGHT so!

Sister: Did you put this up there?

Me: I haven't seen them in YEARS, and I've certainly never seen this picture. I swear it wasn't me.

Sister: I'm calling her! This is too funny.

So she calls our aunt who FLIPS the fuck out. She ends up emailing the webmaster and getting the picture pulled.

Anyway, that story was posted as my way of saying thank you to Awkward Family Photos for getting me to call my mother. She couldn't complain about me never calling her for that month.
posted by educatedslacker at 7:22 AM on July 28 [23 favorites has favorites]

I'm a fan of Tweeting to Hard.
posted by Uncle at 7:25 AM on July 28 [1 favorite has favorites]

Thanks to my sis telling me about it, I was just checking out Texts From Last Night for the Dallas area code and at the top of the list found

(214): i just renamed my vag "the sorting hat"

Oh. Oh dear.
posted by romakimmy at 7:25 AM on July 28 [1 favorite has favorites]

This is something I would read every day if I wanted to be a hermit.
posted by hellojed at 7:27 AM on July 28 [1 favorite has favorites]

I really didn't believe that anything could outbore the NYT Metropolitan Diary, but thank you, 'nets, you've brought self-important reportage to a new low. Onward & downward.
posted by beelzbubba at 7:40 AM on July 28

what
posted by Dr-Baa at 7:42 AM on July 28 [2 favorites has favorites]

Overheard in Burbia
posted by eye of newt at 7:44 AM on July 28

Okay, granted, the title "Disgusting People I Have Made Out With" probably should have clued me in, but that site needs a NSFW warning.

For its colour scheme, I think it needs a NSFEyeballs warning.
posted by never used baby shoes at 7:47 AM on July 28 [2 favorites has favorites]

I've met so many people who have told me that they've seriously seen stuff they've said show up on Overheard in NY, seriously. I have so far resisted the urge to point out that it's not because they were actually overheard, but because in a city of 10 million people it's pretty common for people to be having the same exact conversation as you just a few subway cars down.
posted by hermitosis at 7:55 AM on July 28 [4 favorites has favorites]

These overheards are great fun because we read (and we are much superior) what silly (them) people say, or slip up in saying. Makes us laugh and also feel superior. Why not run tape and record what you say throughout the day? Any better?
posted by Postroad at 8:10 AM on July 28 [1 favorite has favorites]

Ooh I love these. Thanks.

Also, Vanity Plates: Creepiness in 8 Characters or Less
posted by ydontusteponit at 8:19 AM on July 28

I said what hermitosis said and you overheard it.
posted by storybored at 8:20 AM on July 28

MeFiting too hard, lawl.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 8:21 AM on July 28

My personal favorite:

(919): so I was just driving high and I stopped to let a pinecone cross the road because I thought it was a hedgehog.
posted by cdmwebs at 8:22 AM on July 28

That bad tattoo blog is pretty funny.
posted by Mister_A at 8:28 AM on July 28

There's always http://www.bash.org/
posted by enamon at 8:43 AM on July 28

Oh, god, the vanity plates site is brilliant. Laughing too hard!
posted by marginaliana at 8:49 AM on July 28

lol, Afroblanco is #22 on tweetingtoohard atm: "I'm too cool for twitter". Uh huh!
posted by kaspen at 8:59 AM on July 28

D'oh!
posted by kaspen at 9:01 AM on July 28

Finally, there is just plain bad luck or failure: F My Life

Snobs might say it lost something in spirit ... a certain je ne sais quoi ... in translation from the original French.
posted by Doktor Zed at 9:12 AM on July 28

F My Life is a regular waste of time for me, even though I'm positive some of them are made up.

It's refreshing to see other people who are suffering more than I am.

Overheard in NYC is hilarious as well.
posted by elder18 at 9:17 AM on July 28

Don't forget YouSuckAtCraigslist.com
posted by WerewolvesRancheros at 9:26 AM on July 28

... a certain je ne sais quoi ...

Ah, as always, how much more expressive is the original french! Whereas fuck my life is an active verbal process implying the deliberate fucking of one's life, vie de merde is a purely descriptive statement, a lament that one's life is composed of shit, without the unnecessary additional condemnation of fucking it further.
posted by kaspen at 9:27 AM on July 28

Texts From Last Night is one of my favorite things on the entire internet (though NSFW if anyone was wondering).

(215): i got kicked out of Barns and Nobles cuz i put all the bibles in the fiction section
posted by fshgrl at 9:40 AM on July 28

Not Always Right is awesome.
posted by Medieval Maven at 9:47 AM on July 28

via? :)
posted by nitsuj at 9:49 AM on July 28

These overheards are great fun because we read (and we are much superior) what silly (them) people say, or slip up in saying. Makes us laugh and also feel superior.

I often find them funnier or more clever than me! Though I do hate the obnoxious descriptors they use.
posted by kathrineg at 9:59 AM on July 28

Ugh, I want to send an obnoxious facebook message I got to STFU, Believers but I deleted it.

It was 5 or 6 huge paragraphs about what it means to be born again and be a true Christian. OK, great, thanks, I already have a Christian religion on my facebook profile. Guess it's not Christian "enough". Asshole.
posted by kathrineg at 10:02 AM on July 28

There's also There, I Fixed It, my personal favorite.
posted by pemberkins at 10:07 AM on July 28

For fans of AskMe and this thread.
posted by prefpara at 10:32 AM on July 28 [2 favorites has favorites]

Curse you, Texts From Last Night! Some things, you can't un-know.
posted by Lush at 10:43 AM on July 28

"If it wasn't for my horse, I would never have spent that year in college."
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 11:15 AM on July 28 [2 favorites has favorites]

This post reminded me of In Passing (RIP), which might have started this whole thing in retrospect...
posted by flaneur at 12:21 PM on July 28

I love this, and don't even know why:

(918): Five things that make you perfect. Go.
(1-918): The skin of a dead hooker. The blood of the innocent. The soul of a kitten. The hat from cat in the hat. And sunglasses.

I'd forgotten what a great time-waster Texts from Last Night is.
posted by misha at 2:26 PM on July 28

Not Always Right is just too close to home. Deal with that shit every day at work. But thanks for the post.
posted by Rykey at 3:48 PM on July 28

As long as we're having a bout of "what's good from Texts From Last Night," for me it has to be "I'm not going to blow you while you look at fish on the internet." I mean, in what context is this sort of shit going down in people's sex lives?
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 4:11 PM on July 28

On the other hand, there is a site that I'm growing increasingly fond of called Gives Me Hope, which is self-described as 'like F My Life, but for optimists'.

Granted, not every post is really that inspiring, but many of them are quite moving; it's a good dose of 'the world is not completely composed of stupid and malicious people'.
posted by Han Tzu at 5:15 PM on July 28 [4 favorites has favorites]

MeFiting too hard, lawl.

lol, Afroblanco is #22 on tweetingtoohard atm: "I'm too cool for twitter". Uh huh!

To be fair, Afroblanco has stated that that's not him.
posted by youarenothere at 6:32 PM on July 28

Gives Me Hope is fantastic. Thank you, Han Tzu.

This is one that got me. "I suffer from severe depression. I try to keep that part of me away from friends because I'm worried they'll judge me for it. After revealing this to a dear friend via email, he went silent. I went to bed feeling worse than ever. Early the next morning, there was a knock at the door. He had driven all night to see me, just to give me a hug. GMH."
posted by notashroom at 6:57 AM on July 29 [2 favorites has favorites]

One of my STFU-related faves: techcomedy.com, especially the End User Phrase of the Day page
posted by HyperBlue at 2:06 PM on July 29

I have to say, I find all of it makes me a little sick in my soul. I enjoy these for a couple of minutes and then, I realize, even if 50% are fake, 50% are a testament to some sad parts of the human condition.

I think it's ridiculous that we enjoy this...enough that I"m sharing the link that I always use to clear my head of such stuff: my life is average
posted by filmgeek at 5:48 PM on July 29 [1 favorite has favorites]

WARNING:

Not Always Right just did a massive drive-by trojan attack on my work computer which is now completely fucked because we use fucking McAfee, which is shit. ARGHH.
posted by giantfist at 3:51 PM on July 31