Type of site | Politics & Popular culture |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | Automatic Media (from 2000) |
| Created by | Joey Anuff, Heather Havrilesky, Terry Colon |
| Founder(s) | Joey Anuff and Carl Steadman |
| Editor | Carl Steadman (1995–1998), Tim Cavanaugh (1998–2001) |
| Key people | Terry Colon |
| URL | suck |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Launched | 1995 |
| Current status | Defunct (as of June 8, 2001) |
Suck.com was an online magazine, one of the earliest ad-supported content sites on the Internet. It featured daily editorial content on a great variety of topics, including politics and pop-culture. Launched in 1995 and geared towards a Generation X audience, the website's motto was "A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun".[1] Despite not publishing new content since 2001, the site remained online until December 2018.[2]
Suck was initiated in 1995 by writer Joey Anuff and editor Carl Steadman, two former employees of HotWired, the first commercial online magazine.[1] The name of the website, Suck.com, was chosen as a domain name with possibly offensive connotations — though apparently not enough to be disallowed by Network Solutions, which controlled the InterNIC system for the distribution of domain names before ICANN acquired that authority.[citation needed] The name also described the nature of "news aggregator" sites that "sucked" stories from the internet and published them in magazine-like formats.[1]
During 1996, Suck integrated the writing talent of Heather Havrilesky, who provided the sarcastic comments of her supposed alter ego "Polly Esther" in her column, Filler.
In 1997, Suck published a compilation of the site's most popular essays in Suck: Worst-Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising and the Internet (ISBN 1-888869-27-5).
In the years 2000 to 2001, cartoonist Peter Bagge did a number of comics journalism stories for Suck on such topics as politics, the Miss America Pageant, bar culture, and the Oscars.
In July 2000, after a decrease in Internet investment, Suck.com merged with Feed Magazine to create Automatic Media.[3] The concept was to streamline operations and collaborate on boutique operations with low staffing costs. The joint project, Plastic.com, was founded with only four staffed employees.[4]
Despite the site's faithful following and a combined reader base of more than one million, however, Automatic Media ended in June 2001.[5][6] On June 8, 2001, Suck.com declared that they were "Gone Fishin'" indefinitely,[7] and the site ceased to publish new content.[8] Regarding the indefinite hiatus, co-founder Joey Anuff said, "It was a shame. On the other hand... it’s shocking how long Suck lasted."[9]
During the autumn of 2015, software developer Mark MacDonald began serializing the website's archive in an email newsletter, which is sent on a daily basis 20 years-to-the-day after its original publication on Suck.com.[10]
From the beginning, site founders Anuff and Steadman created daily comically cynical commentary with a self-obsessed and satiric theme. The writing was accentuated by the art of cartoonist Terry Colon. In addition to Colon's distinctive artwork, the website also had many features common to its articles. The main text of each article was restricted to a table only 200 pixels wide.[1] Most articles featured links within the flow of the content rather than as in labeled footnotes or references, which was less common then than it would become a few years later.[citation needed]
Suck.com was nominated for Webby Awards in both 1997 (Books and Magazines category) and 1999 (Humor category).