Suck.com

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suck.com's logo

Suck.com was one of the earliest ad-supported content sites on the Internet. It featured daily editorial content on a wide variety of topics, including politics and pop-culture and was targeted at Generation X. Their tagline, and mascots, were "A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun".

1 The site
2 Style
3 Regular columns
4 Automatic Media
5 Where are they now?
- 5.1 Staff
- 5.2 Contributors
6 Trivia
7 References
8 External links

[edit] The site

Suck.com was founded in 1995 by writer Joey Anuff and editor Carl Steadman who created original daily commentary with a satiric edge. The witty writing was accentuated by the unique artistic stylings of cartoonist Terry Colon. In 1996, they brought on the writing talent of Heather Havrilesky, who provided the sarcastic voice of her alter ego Polly Esther in their most popular column Filler.

In 1997, Suck published a compilation of their most popular essays in Suck: Worst-Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising and the Internet (ISBN 1-888869-27-5).

[edit] Style

Other than the distinctive artwork of Terry Colon, the site also had many other memorable characteristics that tied their daily articles together. The main text of each article was restricted to a table only 200 pixels wide. Most articles would feature multiple unexplained links, foreshadowing the same technique in modern weblogs.

[edit] Regular columns

Hit & Run — A link-driven summary of recent events
Filler — A weekly self-deprecating look at cultural pretension and dating in post-modern times

[edit] Automatic Media

Suck's final article "Gone Fishin'", originally published June 8, 2001

In July 2000, following a sharp downturn in Internet investment, suck.com merged with pop-culture rag Feed Magazine to create Automatic Media. Their concept was to streamline their operations and collaborate on boutique operations with low staffing costs. Their joint project Plastic.com was founded with only 4 staffed employees. Despite the faithful cult following, and a combined reader base of over 1 million, Automatic Media folded in June 2001. On June 8, 2001, Suck.com declared that they were "Gone Fishing" indefinitely, and the site ceased to publish new content.

[edit] Where are they now?

[edit] Staff

Carl Steadman, co-founder, writer, and editor, is now the owner of plastic.com.
Joey Anuff, co-founder, writer and editor, is an author and co-wrote the book Dumb Money. He is now a producer at VH-1.
Terry Colon was the site's full-time illustrator from 1997 until 2001. He now contributes illustrations to publications including TIME
Heather Havrilesky, writer of Filler, Suck's most beloved feature, is now a popular featured columnist at Salon's Arts & Entertainment section. She also writes and takes letters at the Rabbit Blog.
Tim Cavanaugh (BarTel D'Arcy) was Suck's editor in chief from 1998 to 2001. He is now the web editor of the Los Angeles Times opinion page and sporadically runs a webzine called The Simpleton.
Ana Marie Cox, executive editor, (who wrote as Ann O'Tate) was later the writer of popular Washington D.C. based blog Wonkette, and is now the Washington editor of time.com.
Owen Thomas, copy editor, is now chief of reporters at Business 2.0.

[edit] Contributors

Greg Beato (St. Huck) writes and edits Soundbitten.com. [1].
Chris Bray (who wrote as Ambrose Beers) joined the Army. As of June 2005, he is stationed in Kuwait.
Rogers Cadenhead (CGI Joe) runs a blog, Workbench, and a blog host, Buzzword.com; he has also published programming books. He also administers humor site Cruel.com.
Michael Gerber (Bay B. Food) wrote a parody of Harry Potter called Barry Trotter.
Nick Gillespie (Mr. Mxyzptlk) is editor-in-chief of Reason.
Ben Godar (Godar) attends Chapman University film school.
Greg Knauss (An Entirely Other Greg) continues his long-form blog An Entirely Other Day and works in the software industry.
Tom Spurgeon runs the comic book news site The Comics Reporter.

[edit] Trivia

The name of the site suck.com was chosen for its possibly offensive connotations, and is probably also meant to poke fun at the fact that questionably offensive domain names were approved only at the discretion of Network Solutions, who controlled the InterNIC system for the distribution of domain names before ICANN took over that authority.