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Seanbaby.com
from the more-interesting-by-far-than-CNN dept.
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.
Why Katz is largely unloved on Slashdot (Score:3, Troll)
Actually, I don't think this is true, and this is why Katz catches so much flack around here.
Katz is not a techie, but rather a fan of tech/popular culture. Most folks come here for tech news, not cultural news. When the two intersect, as when a computer-animated movie is released, Katz invariably emphasizes 'the stuff cultural theorists care about' and de-emphasizes or fails to understand the stuff techies care about -- and gets flamed for it.
Kids Want Out (Score:4, Insightful)
But these things cannot be genuine, because they do not spring from genuine creative energies. They therefore don't touch the hearts and sensibilities of our youth. So we as parents are left with the common lament of past parents (as so eloquently pointed out by the Beatles in "She's Leaving Home"): "We gave them everything. Why do they turn from us?" They turn from us because we gave them nothing, except blinders and 'sensation as experience'. Whereas my generation (late 60's thru 70's and 80's) was somewhat coddled, this one is just plain numb, and it takes a lot to wake people up anymore, so shock and 'Extreme' (how many times have we heard that buzzword?) sports and experiences are necessary anymore. Trust is lost; truth is meaningless; connection is severed. One can only wonder how this generation will raise its children? They will have a tough time to the degree that they - for reasons of expedience - have bought into whatever the media culture was selling while they were growing up.
Oh, and please don't bring up Suck; every Wednesday without Polly and Terry just reminds me of how much this Promise is failing, falling to the likes of Disney and AOL.
You know, I was going through my mp3's the other day, and I realized how things have changed. The first 30 or so songs I dl'd were of Radiohead (only live bootlegs, mind you, and yes, two wrongs do make a right here), but they weren't off of Napster, they were downloaded off of fan's pages! You just don't find that sort of access anymore. Not like the old days, ahhhh.... 1998, I remember it like it was yesterday...
We've given them everything. We've taken away everything. It depends on your perspective.
Culture == Hate? (Score:5, Insightful)
I assume from Mr. Katz's high praise of Seanbaby as a sign that women in the 21st Century still need to be verbally brutalized for the amusement of men based on their physical appearance. Good for you Mr. Katz! You have revealed yourself for what we all believe you are, the UbberTroll! Congratulations!
Have you thought about running around and calling homosexuals, "STUPID FAGS" like Seanbaby? Or do you remember all you articles regarding Columbine and other school shootings. Praising what you tell us you detest is very confusing.
Another great site in this vein... (Score:4, Flamebait)
You Bastards! (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, this article is all about preserving SeanBaby.com and all the sites like it. And then you guys go and set Phasers on Full, and unleash the firehose of the Slashdot Effect(tm) DDOS!!
I bet the SeanBaby server is cowering in a corner somewhere, rocking back and forth, queitly echo-ing, "Think of a happy place, think of a happy place..."
Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a look into the soul of the real America, at least a significant chunk of it.
No, Jon. This is a look at a particular slice of the "real America". Just like Time/Warner, Microsoft, The New York Times, Hollywood, Britney Spears, The New York Philharmonic, Joe's Personal Page, Grandma's Grandchildren Page, and everything else that makes up the tapestry of the "real world".
Something doesn't have to be odd or weird to be "real". Something doesn't have to be Gangsta Violent to be "real". Something doesn't have to be geeky to be "real". A quiet midwest suburban small town with white picket fences is just as "real" as the mean streets of an urban inner city.
And quiet, dignified manners are just as real as loud, obnoxious immaturity. And a large corporation made up of human beings is just as real as whining, complaining pseudo-anarchists.
THIS is a story? (Score:4, Funny)
Next week on Features:
Jon Katz gets knee deep in Onions as he investigates a ground-breaking website that is sarcastic at times, and always hilarious. It's called theonion.com, and this brand new website is making waves. Be sure not to miss it, and please leave your pesky brain at home.
STFU Katz.
Endangered? (Score:3, Redundant)
I'll say it's endangered! It's getting Slashdotted to death already!
Google Cache (Score:3, Informative)
for the link weary.
Wrong point (Score:4, Insightful)
AOL/TW and Microsoft will not be able to replace counterculture. They may make it slightly more difficult to find, but they can't force me to look at their crap.
Re:Wrong point (Score:4, Insightful)
I can almost guarantee that this slashdotting will cost him 500$ or more in bandwidth fees.
Lowtax of sa.com (not the real site, i'm not gonna have him slashdotted too, you either know the site or you don't) has said that it costs him up to 2-4k$ a month in bandwidth fees. Possibly more, as he won't tell anyone an exact number.
Check out penny arcade's donation page with the meter... they're paying almost 5k$ a month.
This is out of pocket. Many are going to micropayments now, for obvious reasons.
But once you get more than 20-30 regular readers, cost of distribution becomes HUGE. It used to be that you could get some cheap ads to at least cover bandwidth, but unless you're willing to go popup crazy, ads will only pay a small %. The rest is out of these people's pockets.
Did Katz just subscribe to some LOTD service? (Score:3, Funny)
OldmanMurray (Score:3, Informative)
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