Slashdot Mirror
Seanbaby.com
If there's a single trait most people who read Slashdot share -- maybe the only one besides an addiction to software -- it's a love of popular culture.
Culture has become a huge term, expanding by the week. It has come to include superhero comics, trashy daytime TV, sci-fi TV shows and websites, indie rock, rap and hip-hop, gaming, anime, cartoons, whatever. High culture -- the traditional, respectable, well-funded kind -- gets covered and criticized in the other media. But upstart culture, especially low cyberculture, can be wondrous stuff, an explosition of idiosyncratic voices that gives birth to this website and to Seanbaby.com. Interesting, valuable, fragile and endangered, Seanbaby.com is in its unique way, very significant.
In fact, for those working to maintain their sanity in the Disney/Sony/ AOL/Microsoft nation forming off and around the Web, The Seanbaby News Stupid Probe is a great place to start the day.
You won't get the world as presented by the Today Show there. Instead, you'll encounter what the site itself describes as news that will "kick your head's ass," focusing on frivolous lawsuits, exploding animals, chainsaws and chickenheads. You won't want to miss the Stupid Forum either. This is a look into the soul of the real America, at least a significant chunk of it.
Seanbaby is direct, if nothing else -- most media is not. It describes itself as intended for people over 18 -- only because, as we all know, kids will shoot one another if they hear or see dirty words. Seriously Seanbaby.com is what the late, lamented Suck really wanted to be but couldn't quite pull off. From the 20 worst NES games to Superhero Bios featuring stories, comics and videos about Aquaman, Lex Luthor and all their stupid friends, this site bristles with 'tude, shared cultural references, biting, anti-hypocritical humor. It rakes the moral pompousity that passes for discussion of digital and other culture in Washington, on campus and in much of the other press. It also manages to capture a lot of the lunacy.
The site's links and forms veer off in some strange directions, but Seanbaby.com is a great antidote to news, culture and the corporate entertainment machine as presented in the Corporate Republic.
Seanbaby is one of the reasons the Web's still-vibrant climate of individualistic expression needs to be preserved as Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner gather their forces like two giant and rapacious dinosaurs to plot out the future of the desktop. (Believe me, if either or both win, Seanbaby.com won't be there.) Seanbaby.com is the voice of the other Web, the "real" web, if you prefer. It understands that comics, The Simpsons, and Nintendo aren't just "entertainment" -- they're the basis of whole sub-cultures affecting and shaping people's lives. It suggests the promise of the medium to create original and outspoken content and link people with distinctive sensibilities, two things the AOL culture relentlessly destroys, no matter what it owns, buys or acquires (AOL/Time-Warner is now trashing up the snoozy CNN news network by adding -- what else? -- lifestyle, celebrity gossip, and health stories -- and by hiring the usual platoons of blow-dried airheads. That won't get younger viewers either. The money they're wasting could launch tens of thousands of Seanbabies).
"You should know that some pussies have been known to find sarcasm and bad words confusing and offensive," writes Seanbaby, whose bio also appears on the site. "If so, I, your sexual fantasy from the future, advise you to find a new source of free comedy, caveman. For those who stayed at the risk of face rockage, you should know that soon, like all Earth entertainment, this site will be replaced by Doctor Excitement's Fun Blaster, a peace-bringing combination midget generator and launcher."
Old fart media execs wondering what they have to do to get young people to consume mainstream media have only to log onto Seanbaby.com to understand why they never will, and don't really even want to. This freedom and voice and community and definition of culture will never enter a straight newspaper, pop up on a network newscast or, for that matter, appear on Slate or Salon. Yet it reflects its new culture as well as the New Yorker Magazine mirrors the old. For as long as it lasts in this parlous time of Web sanitation, may it grow and prosper, and spawn a thousand more just like it.
I've read Seanbaby numerous times, and I have to admit that the Superfriends bios were fsckin' hilarious. Then, one day, I clicked on the little picture of a bear cub on the front page and found lots of descriptive words and photos about how this little cub, confused and frightened in the city, scrambled up a telephone pole, where it made contact with some wires that it shouldn't have, and was electrocuted and burned to death. Just exactly what is funny and refreshing about that? I was actually rather horrified to see it in such graphic detail. Humor: the suffering and death of innocent animals? I'm sorry, and call me whatever you want, (I really don't care!) but I anyone who considers that kind of thing to be funny has something very wrong with them.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
I run poe, the sub network sean is on. Seanbaby is currently hosted on ugo's servers. We had to make a deal with UGO (when they won't pay you money get something else). Sean was utilizing 60% of our T1 on most days. Now he has a T1 to himself on ugo's shared server but its metered, hence the no response today. But it is capped so no extra cost to us. Our current bandwidth bills (if we actually paid for everything) would be over $3000 a month. Not what we are making in ad dollars anymore. Eventually bandwidth will get cheaper, but will ad dollars just keep dropping as well? Right now this is all an expensive hobby. Chet
However, it looks like it's not quite working for this site. It still works for Yahoo though. Also, the /. preview is showing a space between the 'o' and the 'm'. Make sure that you don't type one there if you need to enter it manually.
Go HERE. Somehow related to seanbaby. Thank me later.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
I think there is a large proliferation out there of non-corporate content creation sites scattered all over the web. By virtue of being non-corporate, they are just harder to locate unless you are told about it, or happen to pick it up in an off-beat search. For example, another great undiscovered content producer is www.digiclair.com which produces a mix of serious technology and gaming articles with rants and satire pieces. All good stuff, just not well known(til now ;-) ).
Craig.
The1Genius - Littera Scripta Manet
SA is the king of online sarcastic humor. Back when Lowtax was working on it 7/52 and it was able to financially support him (before GameFan went under), it was at a level of hilarity that has never been rivaled in this universe... Rich Kyanka is a funny guy, and his real personality seems to be down to earth and reasonable as well. And for those of you who've never visited SA before, be SURE to check out http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk.
www.safeweb.com
safeweb is your friend.
if "safeweb.com" is blocked, try: http://3630752905/
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
As a huge comic fan and a fan of video games, I find Seanbaby very refreshing. It's fun to see a site that doesn't just kiss the butt of products the author(s) like. Seanbaby tells us what sucks, and makes us laugh while doing it. If you like comics, I suggest checking out the "stupid comics" part of the site. For those of us the right age to appreciate it, the "nintendo" part is really great as well.
Never give up! Never surrender!
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:2BFD0zxjzPw:w ww.seanbaby.com/+&hl=en
for the link weary.
In case anyone didn't know this as well
Seanbaby is a big part of the Oldmanmurray website
One of the funnier game review sites out there, with some fairly biting commentary on the state of the industry
http://www.oldmanmurray.com
I am not paying $3000 for a T1. Reread what I said. We are currently utilizing almost 3 T1's worth of bandwidth. Our actual out of pocket costs are $1400 - and that is not colocation. Chet