RationalWiki:Webshites/Internet

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Someone is wrong on The Internet

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The internet, Internet, interwebs, or internets is a global network of millions of smaller computer networks and was invented by Al Gore. It is not to be confused with the "World Wide Web" that gives us the www subdomain, any series of tubes you might come upon, or real life.

This collection of webshites reveals the bizarre fringes of the internet, webshites that defy categorization, and those that are sometimes good, sometimes shite. This is also where the classic internet kooks of the past are documented.

Techies

• Adam Curry^(link): Former MTV VJ, pioneering podcaster, and completely bonkers conspiracy theorist. Hangs out with notoriously inaccurate tech columnist/hack John C. Dvorak on the No Agenda podcast.
• DistroTube: A reviewer of Linux/Unix-derived distributions that makes rants about the "politicization of free software" then calls upon free software activists to support the National Rifle Association.
• Catherine Fitzpatrick/Prokofy Neva^(link): A long-time Second Life troll who fancies herself a protector of intellectual property rights in virtual worlds. Obsessive Red-baiter with a strong — fuck it, pathological — hatred of gift economies in general and open source software in particular (she prefers the term "technocommunism" and needless to say took it really hard when Linden Labs made the SL viewer open source). Claims to have studied journalism in the Soviet Union, but doesn't seem to understand that communism and totalitarianism are not the same thing; she also seems to think the EFF and Google are part of a conspiracy to, um, make it impossible to make money on the net or something, and thinks the IETF is a totalitarian organization because it's run by consensus instead of strict democracy. She appears to fancy herself a libertarian without actually using the word, but her general presentation is overwhelmingly corporatist. She has several blogs, but it suffices merely to Google her screen name or "technocommunism".
• Eric S. Raymond^(link): Selectively insane when it comes to politics, climate change, and race; largely competent in terms of software and related issues, although he has a habit of vastly overrating said expertise, to the exasperation of pretty much anyone who's worked with him.
• Luke Smith: A Linux YouTuber that makes several videos about why you're doing something wrong on the OS at best, ranting about the kernel's adoption of a code of conduct blaming "the left" at worst, and unironically celebrates Hitler's birthday at not-even-related levels. Riddled to the brim with 4chan & alt-right memes.
• Mental Outlaw: A Linux youtube similar to Luke Smith, but specializes in Gentoo-related content. Labeled Anonymous as SJWs after the fallout of Operation Epik Fail. Non-stop use of 4chan & alt-right dogwhistles.
• TotalDrama.net^(link): Displays an unhealthy obsession with gossiping about and generally slagging TWiT.tv and its founder, Leo LaPorte, whose only response thus far has been "trolls gonna troll". Very sexist, fat-shamey, and has what appears to be a near-stalker-level obsession with former-TWiT-now-TechCrunch reporter Sarah Lane. Probably not completely stable. In other words, the reasons one would not want to be famous.
• Dave Winer^(link): Not quite a kook in the traditional sense; more of a thundering, pretentious bore who had something to do with the development of RSS, most notably the part where it's stagnated for years because Winer has basically made a hash out of the IP ownership. Has had a grudge against Apple since the early 90s because they created AppleScript instead of licensing his Frontier language. Basically the Alveda King of Mac developers. His place in history is assured, but no one quite knows exactly why because Winer would claim credit for anything he's ever touched.
• Digdeeper^(link): Primarily spreads FUD on a wide range of privacy and technology subjects. The remainder of the site promotes several conspiracies such as COVID-19 denialism and The New World Order as well as some Food woo. Gave 8chan parse before it became 8kun. Also gives parse to Eugene M. McCarthy, Ray Peat, and Miles Mathis. Links to several different techie sites with similar or more extreme beliefs.

Internet cesspools

• The Black Vault^(link): An NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal) forum founded after the demise of the NWN! (Nuclear War Now! Productions) forums. Contains a lot of circlejerking around racism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, unfunny 4chan memes, and other forms of bigotry. They primarily exist to give validation to neo-nazi and convicted murderer Hendrik Möbus of the record label and distro Darker Than Black Records (username DTBRex across the forums). Also, lots of whining about so-called "SJWs" allegedly "going against the values of Black Metal" (aka RABM - Radical Anarchist Black Metal). They are closed to the public, but you can register and lurk there after making a bogus intro thread.
• EFUKT^(link): A severely NSFW bordering on NSFL that hosts a list of shock porn of various degrees of disturbing. Efukt is also accompanied by a forum that rivals 4chan in being a meeting place for shit people.
• Kiwi Farms^(link): They are known for doxing people and were in the process of making a website for deadnaming trans people. They're like 8chan lite and claim they focus on "lolcows".
• The Daily Sheeple^(link): A website where conspiracy theorists believe that mainstream media brainwashes people and Public Schools brainwash people into SJW/PC/Liberal cultists. They also name themselves after the all-too common buzzword, sheeple, making them seem like a website by, and for, the worst internet commenters. The site hasn't been updated since March 2020.
• DeadHorseInterchange^(link): It is a forum filled to the brim with trolls and stalkers and is very similar to Kiwi Farms, minus the fact that it is not nearly as active.

Wacky media

• Daily Mail^(link):Worst of the tabloids. Sometimes posts articles that aren't made-up bullshit. All such articles are plagiarised from other news sources; find and use those. rubbish.
• The Sun^(link):
• The Express^(link):
• Sagacious News Network^(link): Despite promoting humongous conspiracy theories, it does have genuinely interesting articles. Its main problem is that nearly all of its articles are citations from other sites. If you stumble across actual interesting stuff on the site it's always good to read the thing that is being cited instead.

Sometimes site, sometimes shite

• AlterNet^(link): Tends to endorse GMO hysterics.
• Aydin Paladin^(link) 4chan user turned YouTuber who makes social science videos, albeit from a right-wing perspective. She falls into the same "blame the left" trap that other "skeptics" like Sargon of Akkad fall into, however she clearly puts a lot of research into her videos and if you can look past the bias, some good information can be found there.
• Buzzfeed^(link): Pioneer of those horrible faux-nostalgia articles that reference scented markers and orange VHS tapes. Purportedly liberal, the news items are all ripped from other sites, with major factual error attached, leading to some embarrassing retractions. When they're good, they make videos such as, If You've Been Bullied, You're Not Alone. They also make pop feminism videos of varying quality with a comedic tone (that are often the targets of antifeminist YouTubers).
• Cracked.com^(link): Has published some hypocritical and egotistical opinion pieces and occasionally oversimplifies or misrepresents historical or scientific studies.
• Common Dreams^(link): A progressive independent news and aggregate site with a variety of articles and links. On the other hand, it's also "progressive" in a very similar manner to Truthout and OpEdNews, with a habit of including (and attracting) a number of writers from the crankier and more hardline/radical sides of the left wing. Read very selectively.
• Dusty Smith^(link): Atheist who appears to have a bit of an ego problem and is a bit of a jerk, although it's very likely this is all just an act. Cannot go 10 seconds without swearing. Made a video where he insulted his Christian fanbase calling them stupid, and made has been known for comparing organized religion as a whole to cancer. Used to be staunchly antifeminist and has a history of racial insensitivity at best (see: Questions White Men Have for SJWs, The United Nations of Cuckistan), but has mellowed out quite a bit in recent years. He's sacrificed a large portion of his audience (and revenue) by standing against anti-SJWs like Bunty King and Shoe0nHead for their shittiness and hypocrisy, something virtually no one in their sphere ever had/has the guts to do.
• EmpLemon^(link): Youtuber and former YouTube Poop maker who calls out flaws in the YouTube algorithm but also has a tendency to act like an obnoxious hipster with anti-SJW views and justifying Donald Trump, though he has expressed that he does not like him. Is on a mental downward spiral and will lose it completely if he doesn't climb out of the right-wing rabbit hole. He claims that video games are on a "downward spiral" due to the reasons you'd probably expect from any right-wing gaming channel complaining about video games. He then proceeds to complain about how YouTube treats him unfairly in spite of the awful things he has done. He also made a video trying to justify the existence of dislikes, possibly out of his own ego. Like many alt-right youtubers he has shown vehement anger towards The Last Jedi. Once declared his "quarantine" from twitter in a post complaining about "social justice and tolerance" in which he states that he laughed at Etika's death because of his belief that "twitter mobs" will cause further deaths. He is also incapable of telling the difference between liberals and leftists, and subscribes to anti-sjw reactionary views of sjw stereotypes and straw men. As of late, he seems to have dialed it down in the 2020s.
• Huffington Post^(link): Arianna Huffington's site has a lot of good news and political content, albeit with an annoying tendency toward progressive orthodoxy (read: U.S. Democratic Party) despite Arianna's having supported Ralph Nader in 2000. On the other hand, the site is full of alt-med woo and New Age nuttery, and the occasional vaccine denialism. Read selectively.
• Hunter Avallone^(link): Former conservative YouTuber who made a video about how he left the right in 2019. Despite claiming to be not as far-right as he was in 2016, there are times where Hunter can still fall back into his old ways.
• Jaclyn Glenn^(link): The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of the internet. Female Atheist and MRA apologist who has multiple times criticized Feminism. Jumped on the Elliot Rodger "mental illness" bandwagon. Former buddy of The Amazing Atheist. In her video against Kim Davis, plagiarized Theoretical Bullshit's points almost note for note and word for word. Perhaps not quite as bad as some other entries on this list, she does also make legitimate criticisms of religion, holds some pro-feminist views (often in the context of religious chauvinism) and is a very vocal supporter of LGBT rights. Your call.
• Monsieur Z^(link): On one hand, this alternate history as in "what if the Beatles didn't break up?"/"what if Oswald had missed?", nothing to do with denialism or such buff can make an interesting video every once in a while, and even manages to be somewhat educational in “Understanding Fascism” – on the other hand, when that is not the case, he may come out supportive of eugenics, Rhodesia or some other common alt-right talking point in a video. His Twitter also states that he "won't Shill for the Shekels"... yeah.
• Occupy.com^(link): Created as attempt at being the Huffington Post for the Occupy Wall Street crowd, it takes pride in promoting alternative media and viewpoints from activists though it's not formally endorsed by the movement's main players. On the other hand, similarly to its inspiration the site has an increasingly prevalent tendency to promote woo and crank-laden ideas (including oddly enough the moonbat variants of Monsanto and NWO conspiracies) as said "alternative viewpoints" along with aggregating more dubious sources alongside legitimate media outlets. As a result, it just teeters on replicating the same mistakes Truthout made. Read very selectively.
• OpEdNews^(link): Has endorsed conspiracies and antiscientific woo.
• openDemocracy^(link): A self-described "digital commons" based in the United Kingdom, whose tagline is "Free thinking for the world." As a debate floor of sorts for international politics, culture and other issues, it provides various articles and opinion pieces from academics, policymakers, journalists and the occasional activist that cover the political spectrum. That said, its professed pluralism can depend considerably on one's biases and has been criticized by some media outlets for providing voices for less worthwhile viewpoints. Thus at times, it can come across as Comment is Free for the intelligentsia if you're not careful.
• Rassemblement du Peuple Français^(link): Has its fair share of biases (such as anti-Americanism), but filled with people that fully understand Gaullism and have insightful commentary on how the current political movements represent their beliefs.
• Reason^(link): "Free minds and free markets", plays the moderate cosmopolitan libertarian counter to Lew Rockwell's radical paleo-libertarianism. Like Rockwell, makes a point of standing on principle and so both Rockwell and Reason are largely devoid of the corporate astroturf that dominates other so-called libertarian sites. Unlike Rockwell, Reason is pro-choice, pro-gay etc. and doesn't hold much truck for quacks, Christian fundamentalists, and woo-meisters. Not without serious problems of its own: chief among them a tendency to veer into neoconservatism, and another being the open comments format is a hive of nastiness.
• Reddit^(link): A massive social media site that has attracted a fair bit of cranks and extremists of all stripes who create their own "subreddits" to promote their wacky views.
• Secular Talk^(link): Does a good job when it comes to advocating the left's economic and foreign policies, such as Medicare for All, Free College, and Getting American Forces Out of the War's we've been engaged in since 9/11. On social issues, on the other hand... let's just say he's quick to vocally speak his opinion for identity politics to the point where he's been buddy-buddy with Sargon of Akkad in the past. Also, he's defended Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang before.
• Shoe0nhead (June Nicole)^(link): Egalitarian atheist from New York. Is known for making videos attacking feminism, most commonly the pay gap, in spite of the fact that she only bases that argument on a comparison between white men to white women and doesn't even regard the other races. In a relationship with the Armoured Skeptic. She also has less-than-cordial relationship with the MGTOW movement. She's a woman though so she passes. Has openly spoken out against anti-feminists who make video responses targeting small channels and displayed horror when the Satiratician made a video response to a 13-year-old girl. She's also created some pretty good takedowns of TERFs and Conservapedia.
• Truthout^(link): Has had embarrassing articles that claim to tell the reader what the mainstream wouldn't.
• TV Tropes^(link): Generally very funny and insightful; just try to stay abreast of the flame wars, childish antics of people who have nothing better to do than hate fandoms, and the psychotic mods, which used to get really mad if you were critical of Lady Gaga.
• Utne Reader^(link): Has endorsed antivaccine hysteria and food woo.
• The Young Turks^(link): Famous for its often scathing criticisms of corruption and bigotry in politics, as well as their attempts to curb money in politics after the Citizens United ruling. Gained fame for being one of the only news commentary outlets that spoke out against the Iraq War before it began, and consistently criticizes Democrats as much as Republicans (which notably put one of their hosts in trouble when he worked with MSNBC). However, it has a lot of frankly frivolous entertainment content jammed into the second hour that you might wanna skip. It also generated controversy because of its shared name with the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide and that Cenk Uygur, co-founder of The Young Turks, wrote an op-ed in 1991 where he denied the Armenian genocide. He has retracted those words in April 2016. TYT has hypocritically released videos criticising the Washington Redskins because their name is offensive to native Americans.

General head scratchers

• Against Xristos^(link) (Warning:NSFW): If "I Am the Walrus" were a website, it would be this. An educated guess of the site's central thesis would be that there's a conspiracy to mis-transliterate the Greek word "χριστος" as "Christ" instead of "Christos". There's numerology, something to do with how cherubs are painted, asian ladies' faces, that Jesus should be Christos not Christ, and then Baphomet... something about transgender people and the devil... Judaism... yin-yang? Wisconsin? Allah? Goo-goo-g'joob!
• The Anti-Media^(link): Nick Bernabe's "alternative media" site, flipflopping between Tea Party-style and Indymedia UK-style ideas. Though it tries not to be as obvious as Infowars (emphasis on tries), this self-professed ode to "grass-roots journalism" has quite a lot of hatred for Monsanto and the mainstream media while linking to other similarly "alternative" pages, including a Truther news site.
• ARTV^(link): YouTube music review channel run by Jon. On his alternate channel, made a video titled "The Problem with SJWs", thus appealing to Trump supporters (despite him telling his audience to vote for Hillary during the election). Advocated violence against people who wrote in Harambe during the election. For his video in regards to his 2017 list season videos, claimed that Lil Pump had lyrics that were disrespectful to women in his worst songs of 2017 list while also placing an album Brand New, who has a lead singer who not only is disrespectful to women but also committed sexual assault, as his choice for album of the year. Defended Melanie Martinez in regards to the sexual assault allegations lobbied at her.
• Chris Bores^(link): Has a massive ego and has made pseudoscientific claims in the past to satiate it. In his book Ghost Hunting 2.0: Breaking New Ground, a book that is supposed to be about ghost hunting, he claims at the end of it to have developed a whole new branch of psychology. He has also been accused of antisemitism for how he portrayed Jews on his infamous Irate Gamer Show, which is totally not a ripoff of the Angry Video Game Nerd.
• Collective Evolution: website^(link) and Facebook^(link): A clickbait website that loves nothing more than misleading its readers.
• The Emerson Avenger^(link): A guy who rails against Unitarian Universalism in a manner akin to Ken DeMeyer's railing against atheism.
• Russ Ewert^(link): Completely obsessed with a calender of his own creation. He claims that if the world switched to it there would be world peace. On various conspiracy sites he trolls threads to insert comments about his calendar that are typically completely off topic. He occasionally purports himself to be a new messiah, having recently started using the moniker Pope Russ or Pope Russell.
• Encyclopædia Dramatica^(link): Used to be a cesspool, but ever since the original creator, who hates what the site became, attempted to turn it into Oh! Internet, which almost killed the site, most of those have left leaving only a select few editors that were more interested in the cataloguing of internet drama. It could have been a great source for your daily dose of internet news, but unfortunately the editors seem more interested in making everything and everyone look bad and adding porn everywhere rather than engaging in any form of objective cataloguing whatsoever. It's bad at what it's trying to do and unless you're a fan of hentai, hardcore porn and dumb cynical humor you should stay away from it.
• Face to Face^(link): Obsessed with the idea that the libtards, fags, feminazis, beta males, and (especially) Jews have cowed us all into a life-denying "cocooning" culture, or something. He's also big on "human biodiversity" and appears to regard the 1980s as the Golden Age and apogee of American civilization.
• Robert W. Felix IceAgeNow^(link) and EvolutionaryLeaps^(link): Everything is caused by magnetic fields and cosmic rays. Vast amounts of pseudoscience, woo, and conspiracy theories.
• The Flat Earth Society^(link):
• The Freedom Association^(link): The British equivalent of the Tea Party crowd!
• Haig Report^(link): Some Australian guy rants about the University of Queensland, the police, feminism, Coles and mercury poisoning among other things. As the website that owed its name to Haig's Law, the design suggests the owner might have ate a kaleidoscope and vomitted on his computer monitor, and he nothing less than confesses to possessing a skull deformity.
• Keemstar (as Drama Alert)^(link): Covers news stories without going into details about those stories. Said an innocent old man playing video games was someone who was still in prison. His apology video got several dislikes. This video perfectly describes him.Also runs a podcast channel called "Baited!". The content of this channel consists of him, and two co-hosts, discussing current and previous Internet drama. Keemstar is known for blocking people on twitter because they don't agree with him, as well as making rash decisions and not thinking about the things he says before he says them Is infamous for livestreaming a rant in which he called a man named Alex (who made fun of his Italian ancestry) a "nigger" several times, which eventually became an internet meme.
• The Mind Unleashed website^(link) and Facebook^(link): The Mind Unleashed encourages people to open and free their minds, which going by what they post means to abandon skepticism, critical thinking and embrace pseudoscience and fantasy instead.
• New World Encyclopedia^(link): A Moonie encyclopedia.
• Nuwaubianism^(link): Kooksite archiving the remnants of Dwight York's bizarre cult.
• Orgy of the Will^(link): The pseudo-philosophical social Darwinist far-right screed of Anthony Zyrmpas, a mentally ill narcissist who has quite possibly mangled Nietzsche worse than anyone ever has ever (other than Hitler). He scams people under the guise of making a videogame, which he has absolutely no idea how to do.
• Quantonics^(link): Homepage of a new form of economics that is based on quantum... something-something. Holograms... Keynesian is evil... destroy the fed... Oh, hell, we don't know.
• Parazite^(link) (Warning: NSFL): Some Finnish guy rambles about computer piracy, freedom, anarchy, security and privacy and in addition, he provides collection of "forbidden" files and howto's.
• Thought Catalog^(link):

Time Cube: It looks the same at every point...

• Time Cube^(link): The jewel of the clogosphere. Perhaps the craziest and most incoherent website ever created. A severe paranoid schizophrenic rambles on for pages and pages and pages about time being cubic and the Earth undergoing four simultaneous 24 hour days during a single axial rotation. Or something. College debating societies have invited him to campus to serve as target practice. If you only read one of websites listed here, read this one. It's much, much funnier than we made it sound just now.
• TReVoices^(link): A crazy transphobic trans male has created a website adhering to Haig's Law advocates to ban gender transition to anyone under 18. One of most bigoted webshites of all time.
• Vegan Gains^(link): Is in the camp of vegans who thinks any person who isn't a vegan deserves to die. Makes videos both commenting on people's bodies, such as saying Eugina Cooney isn't naturally skinny. Gains also makes anti-SJW videos, such the infamous "Laci Green raped me" which served as a parody of her false rape accusations video. Made fun of the people who were disappointed with Trump winning the 2016 presidency.
• ukritic^(link): The content itself is typical extruded listicle product, but the articles link to various subpages of webshite todayshealthtip(dot)com, all of which are fake news that promotes scam products and imitates other websites. This seems to be the sole legitimate purpose of ukritic.
• Sex on the Wrong Brain^(link): Sex on the Wrong Brain espouses the theory that masturbation with the right hand affects the left hemisphere of the brain and excites authoritarian impulses that lead to social pathologies, such as certiny deficit disorder.

Parody

• Landover Baptist Church^(link): Where the Worthwhile Worship.
• Weekly World News^(link): Although in this case it's not so much that they're full of misinformation, it's more that you're stupid enough to believe it's real.

Various internet kooks and internet trolls

• David Duke: Ku Klux Klan leader, failed American politician and activist whose work centers around white nationalism.

• JTEM^(link): A Usenet troll known for pushing fringe science on matters of paleoanthropology. He also thinks of himself as superior to virtually everyone in the universe, thus he possesses a mean narcissistic streak as well as being a believer in fringe science on matters of paleoanthropology. Has appeared on talk.origins several times. He is known for being a big asshole as well, as if that's a surprise.

• Milton Kleim: Early promoter of neo-Nazism on Usenet who later renounced racism.

• Guy McPherson: A hard green blogger and sort of watered-down American Pentti Linkola (or bizarro-world Bjørn Lomborg), McPherson is a professor emeritus of biology who argues that nothing should be done about global warming ... because civilization is already doomed (and he seems to think civilization deserves it anyway). Does no research, apart from cherry-picking other people's work.

• Ray Martinez: Self-described "Old Earth/Young Biosphere Protestant Evangelical Creationist-Designist." Troll at talk.origins as well as the CvE forums and other creationist websites. Tried his hand at Conservapedia for a while but took his ball and went home after his particular brand of wingnuttery was found to be unacceptable. Believes that the Bible is inerrant, that the Great Pyramid is a physical representation of the Bible, that Atlantis exists in the Atlantic Ocean and that its existence is proven by the fact that eels return to the Atlantic to spawn. Has been on the verge of publishing a paper that will demolish Darwinism for about 5–7 years now. All questions that seem to undermine his arguments will be answered in his paper. A Ray Martinez Dictionary is available to translate his various positions.

• Onision: Labeled as "the most controversial youtuber" on a frequent basis. Likes to mock the appearances of teenage girls, runs a website that doxxes visitors, called 911 on Chris Hansen & is blatantly transphobic. One of the many Youtubers with a grooming scandal. One of the people he abused stated they were sent texts asking them to "be chained to [the] basement wall for a week with a sign around [their] neck that says 'I'm sorry for lying.'"

• Alan O'Reilly: Creationist, geocentrist, huge racist. Involved with the British National Party.

• CNBC: Used to be a reliable source of financial info, but is now basically a crypto shill site.

• CancelThisCompany.com: Alt-right mouthpiece webshite riddled with canards against companies whom they perceive as espousing cultural Marxism. Most gigantic mega-businesses like Amazon and Disney are all pretty seedy, but this webshite takes things too far, as if the alt-tech nonsense they promote is any better at all.