Dieday Q&A

Questionable Bastardization

Greetings, crickets and ghouls. Welcome to the second annual Picture Clinic Halloween Special. This year's post is a very spooky edition of the Friday Q&A. Thanks for joining me. October 31st is truly the most terrifying day of the year, especially if you're spooked by mass-marketed plastic crap.

Q : What's the most frightening Fark cliche?

A: I would have said the Nutsack Squirrel and his over-zealous lawyers, but the answer is apparently Domo Kun. That character's license was obtained by the Target corporation for use as a Halloween mascot. I'm pretty sure it's the first time a Fark meme has been part of a national ad campaign. This is good news for Domo fans, as a wide range products featuring his likeness are now available.

Q: Was Target aware of Domo's status as an Internet meme?

A: It's likely just a coincidence. I seriously doubt this is some kind of attempt at catering to the Fark demographic. Very few people are Farkers. However, it's always a possibility. Maybe Target's Easter promotion will feature the Pancake Bunny.

Q: Why did they choose Domo Kun?

A: He's apparently the next big thing. Domo Kun is set to debut his own TV show on Nickelodeon. Pretty soon he'll forget all about his old Fark cliche friends and stop taking their phone calls. There's no way that a star like him would bring Ceiling Cat and HaHa Guy to all the limousine jacuzzi sex parties he'll no doubt be attending.

That's all for this time, sinful reader. Best wishes for a happy Halloween! I want to close this post by welcoming any new visitors to the Picture Clinic. Thanks for making me your hate blog of choice.

Stay tuned for more vague platitudes from the Doctor!

Friday Q&A

Questionable Repudiation

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Q&A. Since the Clinic's inception, this site has remained the gold standard for Fark photoshop community interest blogs. I do my best to provide the most up to date information available, and present it each week in the form of an asinine rant. In this edition, I'll be taking another look at the website Manipster, which was once again linked in the PSAEF recently.

Q: What is Manipster?

A: Manipster is a website that archives the entries from Fark photoshop threads. It appeared a few months ago, around the time that the Honor Roll went offline. Unfortunately, it's never been a useful resource like the HR was. Originally, it only archived the last five contests. This made the site pretty useless, given the volume of PS threads on Fark. Fortunately, Manipster appears to be a work in progress. Many new features have been added since my original review of the site, and it's only fair for me to take another look.

Q: What kind of new features?

A: First of all, it appears that Manipster will now remember all the contests since mid September, instead of only the last five. While this is a definite improvement, the site still stops counting votes way too early. We all know that photoshop entries can continue to get votes many days after live time, but Manipster only keeps track for a few hours. Another notable feature is the addition of a comment section for each contest, though right now every thread displays the same identical set of responses.


Q: So who's running Manipster?

A: I suppose that's been the question all along. Since Manipster first appeared, we've had no clue about the creator's identity or motives. Thankfully, his latest updates contained a write up about the site's purpose. It is apparently intended to be a digest of PS contests, for people too busy to actually Fark. The owner seems to be a nice guy, but he's definitely not a photoshopper. Otherwise, he would know the importance of displaying an accurate vote tally.

The good news is that he seems open to suggestions about how Manipster should work. In time, the site could actually become a valuable resource, though presently it's still pretty useless. Until Manipster displays an individual user's PS profile like the Scrutinizer does, our community won't have much use for it.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks again for stopping by. I want to close today's post by apologizing to TheSniperZERO for not openly mocking him more in this edition of the Q&A. Sorry TSZ, maybe next time. Perhaps now that I've mentioned him, he won't feel compelled to leave a snotty anonymous comment.

Stay tuned for more obvious flame-baiting from the Doctor!

Friday Q&A

Questionable Delusion

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Q&A. I'm glad you're here, unless you disagree with me in any way whatsoever, in which case you can go fuck yourself. This week, I'll be taking questions about the newest changes to Fark. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so I'll have to skip my conventional opening diatribe about TheSniperZERO. I'm sure he won't mind, because he's a stupid jerk.

Q: Why is Fark selling headline t-shirts?

A: Drew must need more beer money. In a feature similar to CNN, Farkers can now buy a shirt with their favorite headline proudly emblazoned on the front. Unfortunately, many users took issue with the annoying presence of t-shirt icons all over the main page. Others noted that the tags on the shirts don't match the standard Fark tags, the left-justified text looks awkward, and anyone seen wearing a Fark shirt should immediately be punched in the face.


Even worse is the fact that 90% of all headlines don't make sense/aren't funny when printed out of context on a t-shirt. Some pretty bizarre examples were posted in this thread. Can you imagine having to constantly explain the shirt to everyone who sees it? I don't know many people who are even aware of what Fark is. Thankfully, the PS community escapes this blatant consumerism due to the quasi-legality of what we do (at least according to the lawyers of a certain well-endowed rodent). Don't look for your favorite photoshop entry on a shirt any time soon. In fact, no PS headlines are available for purchase.

In the end, I suppose submitters may want their headline on a shirt, so there's the potential for at least one sale per link. Unless users figure out they can reproduce Fark's craptastic design in less than five minutes with MSPaint, Drew stands to make a good 15 bucks for every link that gets greenlit. That makes enough sense on paper to justify the attempt, and I'll be interested to see how sales go. In the meantime, Adblock can eliminate the annoying t-shirt icon.

Q: What happened to the TotalFark logo?

A: The logo was shortened in order to make room for all that new ad space. This redesign was necessary, and no one really expected much in the way of graphical styling. After all, the original TotalFark logo was nothing special. Unfortunately, the new logo is a mess.



I don't know why the powers that be went with that design, but critiquing a web site logo is asinine. Personally, I adblock the damn thing. It makes the top of the page look a lot cleaner if you're already using Stylish to remove the banner.

Q: Are you a commie or a fascist?

A: I can only assume you're asking that question in reference to Fark's new Political Inclination Thermometric Analyzer. According to Drew's description, the PITA meter has been implemented in order to pacify accusations of bias by both left and right wing whiners. I personally was not aware of the delicate balance between communism and fascism. It's kind of depressing that the extreme of both ideologies ends in a police state.


At any rate, this is just another new feature that doesn't affect the photoshoppers. I suppose if you really hate the graphic you could adblock it (this blog is becoming like a damn advertisement for that plug in). As for my own political views, I try not to make them an issue here at the Clinic, something that I'm sure my international readers are thankful for. American politics is surely an annoying distraction from scratching at the dirt in front of their ramshackle huts.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. As always, thanks for stopping by. While some of you may be upset at the unappealing look of Fark 2.5, keep in mind that things could be a lot worse. While a contest to design the t-shirt template or TF logo would have been fun, Drew chose to go another route. I for one am glad we didn't get involved. People are going to hate the shirts and reduced logo regardless of who creates them.

Stay tuned for more truthful cynicism from the Doctor!

Friday Q&A

Questionable Depression

Greetings, crickets and trolls. This was a pretty eventful week for our community, and I'm sad to say we suffered an unfortunate loss. There are a few items I'd like to go over, so I'm going to dispense with the conventional character assassination and self-aggrandizing pap. Don't worry, I'll make up for this temporary lull in narcissistic aggression with next week's post.

Q: What happened to Cliche City?

A: It's offline until further notice. Grampy, esteemed Fark PSer and Cliche City founder, received a threat of legal action from the lawyers representing photographer Kevin Schaffer. Apparently Schaffer owns the copyright to that infamous Farknut squirrel picture, and his lawyers took issue with a particular item in the Cliche City's online store. While the dispute had nothing to do with Fark or its photoshop contests, Drew was more than willing to lend his personal and even financial support to Grampy. I sincerely hope this puts all the complaints that "Drew doesn't care about PSers" to bed. Some quick communication with Schaffer was all it took to resolve the situation, but Cliche City unfortunately remains offline for the time being.


Q: Will any good come of this situation?

A: At first glance, no. I'm sure TheSniperZERO is pissing his pants with glee right now, but he should consider a few things before celebrating too much. Some of our community members believed Grampy's site was part of the cliche abuse problem. They failed to realize that these pictures are easily found with a GIS. Eliminating one archive won't rid us of the Paint Huffer Guy, Mustard Man, or the infamous Farknut Squirrel. I hope Grampy will get Cliche City back online soon, since it has always been a great reference tool for learning how Fark memes originated.

Q: What about the new Totalfark features?

A: They are supposedly forthcoming. Last week, Drew announced some new goodies intended to act as a trade-off for the addition of ads to the Totalfark service. First of all, anyone purchasing a six month or year long subscription will receive a "{yourname}@ultrafark.com" email address. Whether you can continue to use it after the subscription expires has not been made clear yet. Hopefully the powers that be will find a way to integrate this email function seamlessly into the site. Given their track record for design, I can only assume they will be using duct tape and bungee cords. There are actually a few new features on the horizon, and Totalfark users have been promised full access to the beta testing. Hopefully we won't be told to "get over" any bugs we report.

The last TF perk proposed was an annual Totalfark-only convention. This seems like a logistically impossible task, given the site's international appeal and the general laziness of its users. I also have a few questions about the event's exclusivity to Totalfark. What if you have TF, but your spouse doesn't? Can Liters come to the convention if you sponsor them just for that month? Hopefully we'll get the answers to these and other inane questions soon enough.

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Thanks for stopping by. I want to take some time here at the end to offer Grampy an apology for discussing his personal business here at the Clinic. While his legal troubles are none of my concern, the loss of Cliche City is a noteworthy event in our community. As the last remaining photoshop blogger, I feel the need to comment on the situation.

Stay tuned for more situational commentary from the Doctor!

Friday Q&A

Questionable Compression

Greetings, crickets and trolls. Welcome to another edition of the Friday Q&A. This week, we witnessed the unpopular debut of ads on Totalfark. Until now, freedom from advertisements was a major selling point of the TF subscription. In this week's post, we'll be looking at why Drew chose to make the change.

Q: Why do we need ads on Totalfark?

A: It's all about money. Drew apparently needs the revenue generated by the sale of these ads to keep the site running. If this truly is the case, then TF ads are a necessary evil. The layout certainly isn't new. Farklite users have dealt with extra ads and an extremely narrow comment section since the site's redesign. Avoiding such annoyances was a key selling point of Totalfark. Now that the "kinder gentler" edict has ruined TFD, the last real enticement is early access to the contests. That's a fine lure for PSers, but what about the rest of the community?

Q: Why are people so mad?

A: I don't think anyone is questioning the actual presence of the ads. We all know that the economy is in the shitter, and Drew has to do what it takes to make ends meet. We want Fark to survive, and if that means the inclusion of a few banners, so be it. However, there is no excuse for ignoring the problem of the layout. The large gray area on the right hand side of the screen is a joke.

Fark's ad space isn't nearly as obtrusive or annoying when compared with some other sites I've seen. However, it also seems to be poorly utilized. Once you scroll past a certain point, the banners aren't even visible. Why they refuse to alter that layout is beyond me.

Q: Is there anything we can do to fix the problem?

A: Thankfully, yes. By using Firefox and a couple of plug-ins, you can completely ignore the new Totalfark reformatting. This workaround was posted in the PSAEF and the Squirrel Forums, but I'll go over it here in case anyone missed out. You'll need the Firefox browser, as well as the Adblock and Stylish plugins. Once you've installed these programs, open up the options menu for Stylish and click the button to write a new style. Give it a description and paste the following text into the appropriate box:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml); @-moz-document domain("fark.com") { #topAd728x90 { display: none !important;} #bodyRightSideContainer {width:150px !important;} #rightAd300x250{display: none !important;} #rightSideRightMenubar{display: none !important;} #bodyHeadlineContainer {margin:0 170px 15px 0 !important;} }@-moz-document domain("totalfark.com") { #bodyRightSideContainer {width:150px !important;} #rightAd300x250{display: none !important;} #rightSideRightMenubar{display: none !important;} #bodyHeadlineContainer {margin:0 170px 15px 0 !important;} }

Thanks to the TFers who helped provide this workaround. Once it's enabled, you won't have to worry about your comment sections getting compressed. You'll also find that all banners have been removed from the Fark main page. The stylish plug-in is a must, even for Liters. You won't be able to see the classifieds, but who the hell reads that crap?

That's all for this time, gentle reader. Next week, I'll be discussing the new Totalfark features intended to make up for the unwelcome presence of ads. Hopefully, these trade offs will be enough to keep subscribers on board.

Stay tuned for more wishful thinking from the Doctor!