The fish is dead, the barrel is dry but the gun is still smoking

November 20, 2015 10:22 AM

Suck, Again: Updated every WEEKDAY, twenty years ago. A newsletter reissue of Suck.com.

Previously: A history of Suck

posted by not_the_water (33 comments total)

Today I learned that suck.com is now a squatted domain, and there were DNS issues in the past that made browsing the Internet Archive version (temporarily) impossible, but the archive.org versions are available again, if you want some vintage websnarkery and that fitting artwork by Terry Colon.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:34 AM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

I had
completely
forgotten
about
Suck.
Thanks
for this
post.
posted by bondcliff at 10:38 AM on November 20, 2015 [11 favorites]

This is the inevitable "I am old" comment.
posted by matildaben at 10:48 AM on November 20, 2015 [7 favorites]

I'm old too. Where can I find the original word.com?
posted by colie at 10:55 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

waxy got the Suck folks together for a couple of talks at XOXO this year, and it was pretty great to see them talk about old shit, but it was also weird and interesting to see a lot of people being like "I don't know what this is, what is this, what was this" about the site because, well, they're relatively young.

And the thing is, I'm not really old enough to have really appreciated Suck at the time—I was a teenager for most of its run, I couldn't keep up with it at all in terms of cultural and sociopolitical references—but I felt like I was in this weird bridge space of old enough to be aware of and have fond memories of it but young enough at the time to share, across the gap of memory, in the "yeah but wtf is it" reaction other fest-goers were having on first contact.

Suck's a site I wish I had been like ten years older for, basically.
posted by cortex at 10:56 AM on November 20, 2015 [8 favorites]

I miss Terry Colon.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:00 AM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

I read Suck on a daily basis when it was coming out. It was one of those gotta-visit sites.

2005 Waxy post on the wavering availability of Suck.com

Looks like Terry Colon has a website if you want him to draw anything.
posted by larrybob at 11:04 AM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Early Terry Colon: Record Review comic from Motorbooty Magazine
posted by larrybob at 11:06 AM on November 20, 2015

Damn, this takes me back. Thanks!
posted by conic at 11:16 AM on November 20, 2015

I was in my late 20s so I think I was in the perfect Gen-X-y sweet spot for that kind of humor. I especially loved Heather Havrilesky and am glad she still has an active writing career. Of course, I loved Terry Colon as well.

Also Gen-X zeitgeist humor related, do any of my fellow oldsters want to wax nostalgic about SPY Magazine?
posted by matildaben at 11:20 AM on November 20, 2015 [6 favorites]

Back in the olden days it was Suck everyday. Now in the newer days it's Metafilter everyday. My how times have changed. At least for me.
posted by njohnson23 at 11:22 AM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

I might not be on mefi if it weren't for suck.com. I started reading plastic.com after suck died and plastic led me to read metafilter.
posted by octothorpe at 11:34 AM on November 20, 2015 [5 favorites]

Oh man, remember Black Table? I read black table in high school computer classes.
posted by The Whelk at 11:46 AM on November 20, 2015

> Suck's a site I wish I had been like ten years older for, basically.

That's how my generation feels about plentiful, low-consequences sex.
posted by benito.strauss at 11:47 AM on November 20, 2015 [12 favorites]

I remember early on in Suck's run an IT guy for my company coming over and making an overly-casual point of mentioning how some dumb monitoring app had flagged my visits to suck.com, but that he had checked it out to verify it wasn't pr0n and it had made him laugh.

Scarily we both still work for this same company. Old.
posted by aught at 11:49 AM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

Aaaaaaahhhhh! Had a subscription to Spy in college and read Suck (and was a commenter on Plastic.com) as a young woman out of school. Oh, and Fametracker (I remember the glorious meltdown on Fametracker as well)! ::sigh

Is it because the Internet was so new and wild then that these sites were catnip to me? May it is just nostalgia. I do miss them.
posted by droplet at 11:58 AM on November 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

I might not be on mefi if it weren't for suck.com. I started reading plastic.com after suck died and plastic led me to read metafilter.

MetaFilter: The Plastic.com it's okay to like.
posted by graymouser at 12:05 PM on November 20, 2015 [21 favorites]

I found it endlessly amusing that Suck always had Salon squarely (and deservedly) in its crosshairs ...and then Salon saw fit to take Heather Havrilesky on anyway (and OMG I had no idea she's also been in the employ of The Awl and NY mag too) because, hey, good writing is good writing.

But also, Ana Marie Cox creating Wonkette has been a terrific and terrible development for me personally, seeing as I ended up spending way too much time reading below-the-beltway gossip before I finally wrested myself away.

Still, cheers to Suck for predicting the re-emergence of Jerry Brown way back in the '90s; that was a bit of intel I was glad to hold onto during the Dark (Bush/Schwarzenegger) Times.
posted by psoas at 12:28 PM on November 20, 2015

With the Summer of Trump coming to a close, we needed Suck and Spy more than ever. A golden opportunity, lost like tears in the rain...
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:29 PM on November 20, 2015

Suck was the future of publishing, now it's the past.

I was a dedicated reader, and it was most definitely a starter drug for Metafilter.
posted by chavenet at 12:54 PM on November 20, 2015

But also, Ana Marie Cox creating Wonkette

Oh God, remember all that Washingtonienne nonsense? I remember being glued to those updates.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:56 PM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

Suck's a site I wish I had been like ten years older for, basically.

I wish I were ten years younger. We should trade!
posted by octobersurprise at 1:12 PM on November 20, 2015

I too didn't get to read a lot of Suck when it was around, but I did hang out at Plastic for a bit back when MetaFilter's signups were, shall we say, less than open. It's a shame the site slid downhill like it did, but I guess it's better than what kuro5hin became.
posted by JHarris at 1:42 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm so old, I remember when Salon wasn't a totally disposable void. There was a year or two in there somewhere...
posted by tavella at 1:47 PM on November 20, 2015 [2 favorites]

Haha, that website is so old!
posted by swift at 2:04 PM on November 20, 2015

I remember

IronMinds

FlakMagazine

When Suck.com planted a guy in the audience of a 2000 conference on online journalism to raise his hand and say, "If loving Suck.com is a crime, then let me be guilty"

When Salon1999.com was the URL, and there were overripe 3,000-word think piece articles about "the luscious Monica Lewinsky" and about what it meant to give a stormtrooper a blow job at a Star Wars convention, instead of today's modern clickbait revealing Patton Oswalt as a monster.
posted by johngoren at 2:33 PM on November 20, 2015

Weird. I just started following Carl Steadman on Facebook the other day. Must be something in the air*.

Yeah, count me as another Suck-->Plastic-->Metafilter Metafilterer.

------------------------------
*That old people smell?
posted by notyou at 2:39 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

I am so old...
posted by Jughead at 5:06 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

Another Suck -> Plastic -> Metafilter guy here as well. Though I did stick around with Plastic until the very end...even trying the alternative Trees N Things that popped up when Plastic finally went dark. Never really got the hate Metafilter had for Plastic, but I'm glad I'm here now (though much much less active here than I was on Plastic). Still have a folder of all the stories I submitted to Plastic! :D
posted by snwod at 6:29 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

I had planned to make a big post about suck for the 20th anniversary back in August, so I was really disappointed when I realized that it was finally gone from the web. It still being there year after year helped me feel like those times in the mid-'90s when the Internet was still going to save the world weren't gone forever.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:58 PM on November 20, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, It's all been downhill since we lost suck.com...
posted by mikelieman at 3:13 AM on November 21, 2015

Also Gen-X zeitgeist humor related, do any of my fellow oldsters want to wax nostalgic about SPY Magazine?

Oh yes! I had a subscription to Spy and loved it. : ) For those who don't remember how great it was, read and enjoy. : )
posted by SisterHavana at 10:43 AM on November 21, 2015 [2 favorites]

Can't we just transfer my favorite SPY appellations to current players? I think "short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump" works quite nicely.
posted by memewit at 10:54 AM on November 21, 2015 [2 favorites]