11 Comments“Bwog.NET?” readers ask themselves. “Isn’t that domain suffix for second-rate websites? All my favorite websites are .com!” While .net is stereotypically associated with lower-quality websites than .com, .org, .edu, and .cx, Bwog analyst David Iscoe set out, in the pursuit of truth and self-preservation, to prove that many .net websites were indeed worthy of your attention and valuable time. Through an innovative search technique that required following Google and Wikipedia search results for “net” and “dot net” as deep as 25 pages, Bwog found ten websites that disprove such boorish criticism.
1. Sourceforge.net
A great site for 1337 hax0rz, SourceForge is the best known of many “source code repositories”. With hundreds of thousands of programs, SourceForge makes the source code of programs available to the public for troubleshooting or modification. For Columbia students well versed in programming, it has two uses: a source (haha!) for very conspicuously plagiarizing computer science projects, and an easy way to make a sophisticated, polished program which displays the words “penus” and “vajina”. While Sourceforge.net is a great website, Sourceforge.com is its much less useful corporate counterpart, featuring what appears to be a picture of people protesting outside the Pentagon:
2. BoingBoing.net
Perhaps the best .net precedent for Bwog, BoingBoing (which also starts with a B and ends with a G) started as a “zine” later becoming a “group blog”. Billed as a “directory of wonderful things,” its recent posts included items about hot sauce sold in miniature coffins, a directory of the complete works of Charles Darwin, and a gallery of Italian pulp science fiction magazine covers. The site sports a professional look, well-written but brief articles, and excellent editing; they also are so prolific in that giant round amalgamated mass of blogs known as the “blogosphere” that they forgo the comment section after each post for links to blogs that reference the article. In Soviet Russia, blog comments on you!
3: AlJazeera.net
“AlJazeera.net” might be a few more letters to type for unbalanced news than “foxnews.com,” but the advantages are worth it. For one thing, Arabic writing looks really fucking cool, and for another, there’s significantly less fluff. Another amazing contrast: the “Sci-Tech” section, the last time it was checked, featured an article about a fish fossil filling an evolutionary gap without suggesting that it was a fraud! Though it has too little Cuba coverage for University of Havana North, it might prove to be a useful source for the Left Wing Jihad.
4. Takeitapart.net
Easily Bwog’s favorite of the .net websites, takeitapart.net performs and documents the step-by-step disassembly of various electronic devices, from laptop computers to Nintendo 64 rumble packs. The site is run by an Eagle Scout RIT student, but users who dissect their own devices can display them on the site’s wiki, which means lots of pictures of expensive things that were once boring and whole, but are now in really cool pieces. Still, one can’t help but think how it could be even cooler if they dissected things like mines and bombs; hopefully this has nothing to do with why the owners haven’t updated since late August.
5. LadyBunny.net
LadyBunny is neither lady nor bunny, but rather “the most outrageous Drag Queen in all United States of America.” The site has a dazzling aesthetic complete with Shockwave introductions and a pop soundtrack, and the background picture on the homepage, while not quite pornographic, is not for those with conservative sensibilities. Features include a bio, a promo video, and the option to sign up for “she-mail”. The “bunny blog” is a very hip and somewhat loopy take on a variety of issues, not necessarily drag-queen related. Warning: scrolling through the blog, or navigating the site in general, is about as safe as clicking on AIM links from the same friend who sent you goatse
6. Popgadget.net
Popgadget is Wired directed toward women; although most of its features are not actually female-specific, the reviews are from a female lifestyle perspective. The blog itself is bright and crisp, and the writing has a warm tone. Run by group of seven young women in the know about tech products and modern culture, popgadget details a good number of snazzy, expensive products that would be a waste of money to buy, but it does do a good job of describing why one would want to waste money on it, and tell how much money they would be wasting.
7. Militaryphotos.net
MilitaryPhotos is mostly a forum for members of the military to show photos which bring a personal side to war—a personal side generally devoid of sexual torture. Sorry, but it’s not a niche S&M site. More intriguing than the site itself is a Wikipedia-worthy (wiki-worthy?) occurrence from 2004 – a forum member posted a picture of a SECRET SOVIET SPACE STATION complete with a LAZOR! (For those nerds who think “laser” is the correct spelling, remember your acronyms – L.A.Z.O.R. stands for Lazor Awesome Zap Obliteration Ray). The station was launched in 1987 and fell out of orbit into the ocean, another in a string of failed militarized space stations that included both Death Stars, and the Moonraker and GoldenEye satellites. Their downfall wasn’t Luke Skywalker, Lando Calrissian, or James Bond—just Soviet incompetence.
8. Librarian.net
The fantasy of the hot librarian is now the fantasy of the hot librarian blogger, whom Columbia students hope to lure to the Butler Stacks with clever pick up lines such as “I hear you like libraries. Do you like sex? My school has a library in which people like to have sex”. Unfortunately, librarian.net spoils the intrigue with a fairly plain (not ugly, but sort of plain) image of a middle-aged librarian. The blog’s excellent content is good for bookworms, library enthusiasts (sweet! a library!), bookish people, librarians, and book-lovers: it is about libraries and books, but is thorough and frequently updated. If this librarian worked at Butler, and blogged when she was bored, her website could be boredatbutler.net. Which would be deemed the better boredatbutler? The one with statements like “I headed over to the town offices where the library was spearheading an oral history project” or the one with comments like “You heard me—my pussy exploded.”?
MarsBase.net tells the Mars time (in both true and mean solar time) of various locations on (you guessed it) Mars. The various sovereign nations of Mars have not yet created time zones, so the time is still local – which means that time can be different by a matter of minutes rather than the mundane Earthly time differences of hours. The site also tracks the sunrise and sunset of Mars – swiftly fly the Mars-years for Fiddlers in Space. Along with clocks, charts, and location finders, the site has a display of what Mars looks like from Earth – you don’t even need a telescope!
10. Bullshido.net
Bullshido is dedicated to exposing hokey, commercialized, or otherwise bullshit bushido (Japanese for “way of the warrior”). A practice that might forever change the face of Bwog comments if implemented here, Bullshido forum users challenge each other to martial arts throwdowns to prove their skill and the worthiness of their martial art – just like old Kung Fu movies, where the hero has to prove Kung Fu is better than the various other fighting methods – imagine the matchups Bwog would offer! After a few high-profile exposures, Bullshido turned traitor and launched a .com wing, but bullshido.net remains the central location.
RUSSIAN BONUS: Mozga.net
Mozga.net utilizes on a feature of its web address entirely unavailable on .com domains – the wordplay involving the similarity of “net” to the Russian word for “no.” Mozga is Russian for brain, so the title roughly translates as “no brain” – hence the picture of the brain with a big red X and the sign saying “Please don’t use on this site.” A brain would be strained indeed trying to decode the Babelfish translation of the site, which appears to contain stories, scripts, and jokes. One excerpt:
It went somehow combs pistol to buy, and money – two large bundles, pistols in snow crust cheap – under the cap it placed.
Towards it neighbor, Ilona Of davydovna.
– A what do you have with the head?
– money, it answers combs.
Ilona Of davydovna of eye widely opened and speaks:
– Seme-about- It Seie- Seie-o-onyc -onyc!
— David Iscoe
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11 Comments
@wait a sec How could you not include songfight.net?
@DHI That is a very interesting website that did not appear on the first 25 or so pages of results (or I missed it). I do like the idea of a song fight but how can you like a website when you don’t know about it?
@fuck football WOMEN’S SOCCER!
2-0 over #13 in the Country Dartmouth, tied for first in the Ivies. Ivy title in a serious sport. Too bad they’ve only got road games left otherwise we should totally be supporting this team.
@and not the policy.
@hah goatse
@What the fuck? We fucking lost to Dartmouth.
@lions it was a weird game. we played pretty well though.
@nevermind I figured you meant football. I couldn’t care less about that, and was thinking of the vb team, whic also lost, though after a valiant effort.
@lame this .net apologetics is stupid.
@or.. it could be that bwog.com is already owned by someone else, who will make you pay dearly to give it up
@Anonymous Bwog, fix your links- they’re all referencing locally.