Apathy Sketchpad

One thing I’m growing to like more and more about the internet is how easy stuff like Blogger or WordPress make it to start a website for any old pointless reason, and there’s very little to stop that website expanding to silly proportions. This means that there are a growing number of websites dedicated to documenting rather specific things, and with a whole world to send in submissions, there are lots of examples of them all. Here are a few I know well:

Language

• The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks: signs, shops, and the odd cake wreck or passive-aggressive note, with “scare quotes” or just plain “wrong quotes”.
• Engrish: badly translated English-language signs and products from Japan.
• Literally, A Web Log: tracking misuse of the word ‘literally’.
• Red Pen, Inc.: Mocking bad punctuation and grammar on the internet. See also barrelfishhunting.wordpress.com.
• That’s Punny!: Puns. Mostly bad ones, but that’s like saying “basketball players; mostly tall ones”.
• Apostrophe Abuse: A home for misplaced apostrophes.
• Apostrophe Catastrophe: More of the same. Including a delightfully ironic “student’s for McCain” pen.

Signage

• Signs that Fascinate and Intruige: a Facebook group with thousands of photos of dumb signs. Has a strict rule about it having to be something the submitter found, so no internet virals. Still a scary number of things.
• Say What?: A blog along similarly signatory lines. Pretty good hit rate in a field where that’s unusual.
• Crummy Church Signs: I always approve of mocking churches.
• Hairdressers With Funny Names: Technically a Flickr group but I’m including it anyway.
• A page with daft park bench plaques.
• Oddly Specific signs

Notage

• Passive-Aggressive Notes: notes and signs, and emails, left by housemates, co-workers, employees, and so on. There’s some shocking stuff in there.
• Postcards From Yo Mamma: emails and web-chats sent by mothers to their grown-up children.
• Stall Wall Poetry: A compendium of toilet graffiti.
• Oversharers: Too much information mostly from Twitter.
• Angry People In Local Newspapers: you will get used to the idea that these blogs are named somewhat directly.

Stupiditage

• Not Always Right: collecting stories of daft and unreasonable requests made by customers to put-upon retail staff.
• spEak You’re bRanes: a collection of dumb comments written by idiots, mostly from the BBC’s singularly awful Have Your Say section, where right-wing morons make bad suggestions, jokes that don’t work, and unreasonable demands. That’s probably why it’s at ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com.
• Readers’ Letters: a similar site aimed at primarily-offline media such as newspapers and magazines. Annoyingly LiveJournal-based, but I think we have to forgive that if only because [nja]’s current userpic looks so delightfully like Elvis Costello cover-art.
• Take A Weird Break: hilarious dross from bad magazines
• This Is Photobomb: photos that bad people have ruined.
• Texts From Last Night: drunken SMS messages.
• Facebook Animations: flicking back and forth between consecutive photos on Facebook.
• Overheard In The Office: well obviously this is things overheard in offices.
• Local Jacko: local newspaper reports of Michael Jackson’s death, which suddenly has become a Cambridge-specific event (or wherever).
• Lamebook: ensuring that not just your friends see the dumb shit you do on Facebook.
• Yahoo Answers: dumb entries on the other site called Yahoo Answers.
• Bad Questions For Yahoo Answers: because the site is too moronic for just one blog.

Failage

• Cake Wrecks: a blog showing photos of bad cakes. Professional ones only: no mocking your family. It started when the author got this cake back from the rather dim bakers.
• The FAIL Blog: photos of stupid things, ruined by the application of large block letters saying “FAIL”, all of which were added in Paint Shop Pro. You can tell because Photoshop does letter corners correctly.
• Photoshop Disasters: pictures from newspapers, websites, magazines and the like, which have obviously been edited by morons. There are a few on here that I disagree with, though — at least one where they’ve highlighted a wrist and said “look at the unnatural way that wrist is bent, did they think we wouldn’t notice”, and I can bend that way.
• It’s Lovely! I’ll Take It!: badly chosen photos from house adverts. And here’s a similar one in Probably German.
• Bad Parking: I’m sure you can figure this one out…
• Self Published Books: …which it is obvious why nobody else published. Unlike…
• Awful Library Books: …which inexplicably were.
• Unfortunate Names: This is pretty self-explanatory. Which is kind of ironic.
• Picture Is Unrelated: Like the FAIL Blog, only better.
• LOLTATZ: dreadful tattoos.
• There, I Fixed It: attempts at DIY, with the emphasis on ‘attempts’.
• Don’t Judge My Hair: because I am in a position to criticise.
• If Global Warming Is Real Then Why Is It Cold?: Political cartoons that are all pretty much the same moronic point.

Miscellanage

• Kemp Folds: unbelievably, this is pictures of Ross Kemp folded so that he looks silly.
• Kemp My Pen: as if Kemp Folds was somehow not enough, now you can see people who’ve attached photos of Ross Kemp to their pens.
• Selleck Waterfall Sandwich: this gets self-explanatory pretty fast.
• Things Younger Than John McCain: a blog which lists things which we all take for granted but that are younger than Republican presidential pipedream and probable next host of Countdown, John McCain.
• Patently Silly: rarely updates any more, but lists a lot of strange patents issued in America.
• Sexy People: Old photos. (It seemed harsh to class it as Failage.)
• Insanewiches: Crazy sandwiches.
• Sleep Talking Man: A woman types up the nonsense her husband talks in his sleep.
• Mad Calculator: The random ‘numbers’ produced by a dying calculator.
• Glum Councillors: Local councillors point at bad things and look sad.
• But Sir…: Me and Ben mock dumb petitions. See also, We The Undersigned.
• Lunch Bag Art: A guy who paints on paper bags for his kids and shows the internet the results.
• Awkward Family Photos: Fairly self-explanitory.
• Dateline: Silver Age: Newspaper headlines from comics.
• Paint My Album: Album covers in MS Paint.
• Awkward Boners: er… yeah.
• Things That Look Like Cock ‘n’ Balls: See above.
• Don’t Even Reply: In which a man sends timewasting letters to people who post classified ads. Good fun, but inexplicably has no RSS feed.
• No First Date: Much the same thing on a dating site.
• This Peanut Looks Like A Duck: Pictures of non-duck objects which accidentally resemble ducks. A bit.

Slightly Rubbish Ones

• Graph Jam: a not-as-good version of this Facebook group which has also gone downhill.
• Sexy A-Levels: photos of pretty teenagers from newspapers on A-level results day.
• Apostophe Abuse In Everyday Life: complete with nerdy URL, insofar as any other type of URL exists. Also does other kinds of grammar. Hit and miss, mind.
• Man Babies: Photos of fathers and sons with the heads swapped round. Why? Who knows.
• You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice: Blatant rip-offs on the internet. A kind of mob-rule copyright law.
• STFU, Marrieds: mocking married couples on Facebook.
• One Post Wonder: Blogs with only a single post. Like, one would hope, Man Babies.
• Regretsy: bad things sold on Etsy.

Those are all the ones I know. Anyone know any others?