Back in the heady days of the late 1990s, when we were all just getting the hang of the intertubes, and Yahoo seemed like such an edgy and off-the-wall name for a search engine, my prime concern was amusement. I’d crawl out of my narrow dorm room bed in the morning (alright, late afternoon, whatever) and fire up Netscape 3.0 Gold to surf for oddities until my Pentium 120 (it was new then, and FAST!) squealed for mercy.
Kooky Internet churches with their offers of free reverendship (without all the red tape and Bible reading involved in becoming a real church reverend) tickled me for hours. Weirdly altered photos were a bonanza for a guy like me. And, when I wasn’t mining gold and stomping knights over the dorm LAN, occasionally (OK, maybe more than occasionally) I resorted to trolling the usenet newsgroups.
Alas, things change, and the ‘net has become a much more sophisticated place. Here’s a short list of my go-to places for online humour:
Awkward Family Photos.com — I think I found this site via Twitter (Not following me yet? Do it). It’s surprisingly prolific, with a nearly daily stream of submitted family pics brimming with irony, bad hair, and well, just plain awkwardness. People sure do put themselves in some strange poses. The best part is that there is SO MUCH to look through when you first find the site (there’s even an MJ tribute).
xkcd — I think Randall Munroe’s description of his own work says it all: “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language.” Doesn’t say it all for you? OK. xkcd = Funny, edgy, stick figure comic strip.
Photoshop Disasters — Sometimes people who should know how to use Photoshop obviously don’t. Hilarity ensues.
Photographer’s Math — This site is another solid Twitter find. Its proprietors post, on a sort of daily-ish basis, a humorous photography-themed equation. Hillarity ensues. No, really. A lot of times it’s funnny, but I think the humour level is directly related to how involved in the photography biz you are. Me, not so much, so I don’t get everything. Maybe a wedding photog, or stock photo guy or gal would.
Oh, and don’t forget the exploits of 4chan, your friendly anonymous Internet troublemakers. See what they did to Twitter over the weekend.
You know you’re just killing time anyway, so why don’t you check back on the Michael Purvis blog for more of what I’m working on, and follow me on Twitter to get updates live. And keep up with what the Sault Star is doing by following the paper’s tweets.
I forgot to put Slashdot’s idle section on here. I don’t check it as often as I used to these days, but for weird news and pics and vids and the like, its pretty sweet. Check it out: idle.slashdot.org
Later.