25 Years Ago Today: Slashdot Parodied by Suck.com (archive.org) 19
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There's more Slashdot-style news blurbs like "Red Hat Reports Income". (In which Red Hat founder Bob Young finds a quarter on the way to the conference room, and adds it to the company's balance sheet...) Its list of user-submitted "Ask Suckdot" questions include geek-mocking topics like "Is Overclocking Worth That Burning Smell?" and "HOW DO I TURN OFF SHIFT_LOCK?" And somewhere there's even a parody of Jon Katz (an early contributor to Slashdot's content) — though clicking "Read More" on the essay leads to a surprising message from the parodist admitting defeat. "Slashdot has roughly 60 million links on its front page. I'm simply not going to waste any more of my life making fun of each and every one of them. Half the time you can't tell the real Slashdot from the parody anyway."
Suck.com was a fixture in the early days of the web, launched in 1995 (and pre-dating the launch of Slashdot by two years). It normally published link-heavy commentary every weekday for nearly six years. Contributing writer Greg Knauss was apparently behind much of the Suckdot parody — even taking a jab at Slashdot's early online podcast, "Geeks in Space" (1999-2001). [Suckdot informs its readers in 1999 that "The latest installment of Geeks Jabbering at a Mic is up..."] Other Suckdot headlines?
- Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune Uses Words "Red" and "Hat" in Article
- BSD Repeatedly Ignored
- DVD Encryption Cracked: Godzilla for Everybody!
- Linus Ascends Bodily Into Heaven
- iMac: Ha Ha Ha Ha Wimp
There were no hard feelings. Seven months later Slashdot was even linking to Greg Knauss's Suck.com essay proclaiming that "Mozilla is dead, or might as well be..."
So whatever happened to Suck.com? Though it stopped publishing in 2001, an outpouring of nostalgia in 2005 apparently prompted its owners at Lycos.com to continue hosting its content through 2018. (This unofficial history notes that one fan scrambling to archive the site was Aaron Swartz.) Though it's not clear what happened next, here in 2024 its original domain is now up for sale — at an asking price of $1 million.
But all of Suck.com's original content is still available online — including its Suckdot parody — at archive.org. Which, mercifully, is still here a full 28 years after launching in 1996...
suck.com? That's nothing. (Score:2)
Next so a submission on anti-slash!
The parody was easy to spot (Score:5, Funny)
There were no dupes on the first page.
I miss those days (Score:5, Insightful)
I miss those days where people liked and cared about sites on the internet not owned by Google, Facebook, or Corporate America. I also miss how there were so many sites that each had and celebrated its own unique kind of culture, and when, on occasion, we'd dis one another for fun.
I also remember how, 25 years ago, the average Slashdot poster was college-aged, male, and unmarried. And I was one of them.
Those were the good ol' days. Now get off my lawn.
Re: (Score:2)
I also remember how, 25 years ago, the average Slashdot poster was college-aged, male, and unmarried.
The web has clearly age community effects. People joined Facebook, then their children didn't want to be on teh smae network and joined tiktok. The same is going to happen again.
And true to life recreating 25 years ago... (Score:3)
we appear to have slashdotted the wayback machine.
Why is it pink? (Score:3)
OMG Ponies!
25 years later... (Score:2)
Re:25 years later... (Score:4, Funny)
Sure it does, just because you haven't found the edit button doesn't mean the rest of us don't know where it is.
Edit: Maybe it's something with your browser settings?
Re: (Score:2)
Those were the days... (Score:3)
Oddly,a couple days ago I was thinking about the related, Plastic dot com. Many years of fun there too
Red Hat Reports Income (Score:3)
"Red Hat has reported its first quarterly income. 'I was walking from my office to the confrence [sic] room when I found a 25-cent piece lying on the ground. Instead of putting it in my pocket, I added it to the company's balance sheet and, well, I think that kind of revenue stream more than justifies our stock price.' And cynics said that 'free' software couldn't make money!"
Pat yourselves on the back, but ... (Score:2)
Sadly, netcraft confirms (Score:2)
Other Suckdot headlines?
+ BSD Repeatedly Ignored
At least one of those things is still true. On the upside, it's *still* true - I'm mean - here!. :-)
Said as someone who used 4.3BSD on a VAX 11/785 (way back) in college and just replaced his 12-year-old D-Link DSR-250 router with a spare PC running OPNsense (FreeBSD), after D-Link Warns of RCE Vulnerability in Legacy Routers [securityweek.com] they won't patch and cant be mitigated. (I use Linux Mint 22 on my desktop system)
Re: (Score:2)
Piker! 4.1BSD on a VAX 11/780