Top Five
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Top Five, also TopFive (www.topfive.com) is an Internet humor website maintained by Chris White. The site, which has been in operation since 1994, publishes a new "top five" list every Monday through Friday. The list items are submitted by a group of amateur comedy writers spread out across the USA, with a few residing in other countries. Editor White selects the best submissions, polishes them up and publishes the finished product.
The lists themselves range in topics, though the most common are those making fun of pop culture, politics, big business, the Internet, and TopFive itself. The site is not afraid of stepping on toes and can at times be downright vicious, although usually in a humorous manner. The quality of the lists varies from hysterical to somewhat pedestrian.
The site has twice been brought into the public eye. The first incident occurred in 1998, when someone attached the list entitled "Top 15 Chinese Translations of English Movie Titles" to an article in the Wall Street Journal. The list took notable American movies and, quite poorly, "translated" them into Chinese. (For example, Babe became The Happy Dumpling-to-Be who Talks and Solves Agricultural Problems). Other news outlets to report this list as factual include the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, ABC World News Tonight, and CNN's Showbiz Today. As is documented by the site, both the New York Times and World News Tonight issued corrections.
The second incident began in 1999. TopFive would publish a list entitled "Top 13 Jewish Country & Western Songs", which would be quoted by presidential candidate Al Gore in a campaign speech. Among the major news outlets to cover this were New York Daily News, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, San Jose Mercury News, the New York Times, Slate, and the Chicago Tribune. As a sign of thanks, the TopFive team received a personal letter from Gore.
