AmIAnnoying.com

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AmIAnnoying.com (AIA) is a website that allows users to vote on celebrities based on their annoyance factors. With more than 19,000 profiles of public figures, it lays the claim as the largest on-going celebrity polling site on the Internet.

It was launched by New York State natives Bruce Goldman, Marc Cutler, and Keith Furman in December 1, 2000 as AmIAnnoyingorNot.com. It was created as a twist of the "Hot or Not" craze. Instead of voting for "regular people", visitors have the opportunity to vote for public figures and their irritability. It is also different from "Hot or Not" in that instead of rating the people on a "1 to 10 scale", it simply asks whether the figure is "annoying" or "not annoying". The user can also vote "undecided" if he/she is unfamiliar or has no opinion of the celebrity. For each celebrity, there is a picture along with background information and reasons why this famous person might be annoying or not annoying. These profiles are authored by Team Annoy (which is the nickname for the three AIA creators) and a devoted following of site users.

While most of the entries on the site consist of individuals, groups such as bands, sports teams, television series, and even street gangs have their own entries to the site. Even AmIAnnoying.com has its own profile, where in its early years it got mostly annoying votes.

AIA keeps track of the votes cast and produces two on-going lists: the 100 celebrities who have the highest annoying percentages, and the same for least annoying. Each week AIA takes the top 25 in both lists and use them to compile the year-end "most annoying of the year" and "least annoying of the year" lists. Though in years past the voting totals weren't reset until the end of the year, they started to reset the polls each week in 2006. AIA has been used by several media outlets to measure the public perception of the celebrity in their articles. The poll is not scientific, and there have been instances of ballot stuffing despite the five-vote-per-visit rule given by AIA. AIA does have measures to prevent most ballot stuffing, though.

There are recorded instances of some celebrities stumbling onto their own profiles on the site. Some found amusement in their inclusion on the site, with a few even submitting collections of those most and least annoying to them on the site. Others have not been so amused. Lawyers representing the Church of Scientology threatened legal action for the usage of a picture of its founder L. Ron Hubbard, forcing AIA to alter the picture. Due to a family request, AIA also removed a profile of Matthew Shepard, and it no longer accepts profiles of those famous only because they were murdered.

At the end of 2004, the tabloid Star Magazine had an issue devoted to the "Most Annoying People of 2004", with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton topping that list. It had no affiliation with AmIAnnoying.com, and it is not known if Star lifted that idea from the site or it was merely coincidental. AIA posted a slogan "The Original and Interactive Annoying Celebrity Poll" after the Star issue came out.