Yahoo! and Their Increasingly Stupid Featured Stories

We are so fucked.

I don't know how many of you visit Yahoo!'s homepage on a regular basis, but at this point I'm ready to recommend that everyone avoid it in the name of sparing yourself a few IQ points.

For those who haven't yet fallen victim to Yahoo!'s idiocy, the basic idea behind Yahoo! Featured Stories is that every day they display a handful of stories on their homepage that are supposed to interest visitors.

The first bout of elevated blood pressure came a long while back when I was under the impression that the Featured Stories were supposed to reflect important things that were happening in the news headlines. For a while I got upset that they were constantly linking to stupid shit like weight loss tips and celebrity gossip. But as time passed I came to realize that "Featured Stories" did not necessarily mean "News Stories". The Features were just meant to appeal to what (moron) readers might be interested in.

So I let it go. Although I still stood in awe of the types of articles Yahoo! assumed it's readers would be interested in. And it scared me a little because Yahoo! wouldn't put them up if there weren't some basis in fact (Yahoo!'s readers must be dim-witted trailer trash).

However, tonight takes the cake. Even with my knowledge that the Featured Stories aren't supposed to reflect the world's most pressing affairs, I'm having a hard time letting this one slide:

http://ca.sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Worst-date-ever-Boyfriend-bails-as-foul-ball-hi?urn=mlb-261442

I don't know exactly how long that link will work for, so if you happen to be reading this and it's no longer working, the basic premise is that a guy took his girlfriend to a baseball game, someone hit a foul ball into the stands, he ducked out of the way and she got hit with the ball. And they actually wrote up a whole fucking article going on about "chivalry is dead" as well as...well, basically a whole fuckload of NOTHING!

This is the kind of crap I'd expect to see written by a 7 year old in a family newsletter. "Extra! Extra! My sister got hit with a baseball at the family reunion!"
And the parents would be so proud that their daughter is becoming quite the little journalist.

But not a "reputable" (chortle!) source like Yahoo!.

I guess the main question I'm asking myself is...hmmm...let me think....oh yeah! "WHO GIVES A FUCK?!" Some meaningless everyday event is now front page because some guy didn't act the way society expects him to act. He didn't save the princess. Holy jumping fucking shitballs, let's get The View on the phone. This is a 5-part episode for them! This is a goldmine! Now a bunch of brain-dead white trash gossips can spend a whole week shrieking about this new addition on their ever-expanding list of "Bullshit That Doesn't Matter Yet Somehow Draws Ratings"

Why is this a fucking story?! Wait...hold on a second....I think...yeah...yeah, I've got it!

This is NOT a story and those slimy fucks at Yahoo! know it! This is a tactic, my dear Watson! This is a clever marketing trick (God, please let it be). Yahoo! knows this story is a big pile of horseshit and they're counting on visitors to think the same thing. They're counting on people like me to drop by, read the headline, and say, "No fucking way is this a story" and then click the link to read "the dumb shit other people are obsessed with" out of sheer curiousity.

That's what this is! A story so dumb it lures in and traps the smart people. The old switcheroo! The hidden ball trick! The electric hand buzzer (I don't know, help me out here)!

Please let it be. Marketing and advertising people are the most useless fuckers on Earth as far as I'm concerned but I'd much rather be tricked by them this one time than to know this story is for real and the human race has officially begun de-evolution.


Oh, by the way, fuck both the guy and his girlfriend for going to a boring baseball game in the first place.

Lady Gaga, LeBron James, Justin Bieber, the Cast of Jersey Shore, and TV News

Yesterday I made the huge mistake of turning on the TV. I don't watch television very often, the main reason being that I usually find myself dialing the suicide hotline after a minute or two. I honestly can't figure out how the average person watches between 3 and 8 hours of this parade of shit EVERY DAY! As one of my heroes George Carlin once said, "I don't have pet peeves, I have major psychotic fucking hatreds!" So let's begin.

Lady Gaga: Please! Please! Stop writing news articles for every fucking little thing this bitch does! I don't care! I don't! She's just another singer with shitty "music". If you're into this whole Gaga thing, I'm truly asking you to tell me what everyone's so hyped about because I truly don't get it. I just want to have some grasp on what everyone likes about this cunt so I can complain appropriately. I just don't get it at all, though.

Do people find her hot? Is it the whole man/woman thing? I'm so utterly out of touch with youth values and interests. Surely it can't be the music. Whatever it is, stop reporting on and talking about her! She's just another mediocre hack.

Justin Bieber: Speaking of hacks. Is this little shit supposed to be the new voice of the youth or something? First of all his haircut looks like a homosexual cat got run over and turned into a wig and I don't know why everyone's so gaga over it (aaaw, sheet!). Second of all, make songs that aren't total balls or go back to Stratford.

LeBron James: Following sports stars is for fat, middle-aged, sales reps who have pissed half their life away working for the same boss who doesn't appreciate them. They own small, affordable sports cars and have wisps of gray in their hair and they need something, anything to distract them from how shitty their own lives are. They're under the impression that televised sports actually matter and dedicate their lives to a team. Soon they become sports experts and annoy the hell out of people like me, who are right about everything.

The Cast of Jersey Shore: Personally, I can't wait until "The Situation" and Snooki are old and fat and look like a couple of leather purses. Or maybe they won't make it to old age. Maybe they'll all die from "drama overdose". Maybe one of them will have a heart attack because somebody told them their tan was uneven. Maybe a couple of them will fall into a well and die of starvation because they can't think straight without their hair product and 300 dollar shirts.

I say we pull funding for their rinky-dink little show and pump it into the education system. What an ironic little twist that would be.

TV News: I actually find it kind of cute that you guys still take yourselves seriously. That's so adorable! I think it's so cutting edge of you to form your business model around the old "if a thousand monkeys" theory. If you keep jabbering on 24 hours of the day, eventually you'll say something intelligent and relevant to something.

And your on-screen graphics? Those scrolling tickers and the everlasting stock market window? Your holograms and your word clouds? Man, you guys just must have so much information you're just bursting at the seams! You just need a way to get it all out there!

I simply love your casual little banter and joking between anchors too! You guys are so down to earth, just like me! I can totally see that you guys aren't the uptight news snobs I thought you were. We're all just having fun, but staying informed at the same time as one big family!

Hahaha, I defs LOVE you guys, but...go fuck yourselves, lol!


My solution? Guillotine all of these people and everyone under the age of 20. The heads can be auctioned off to those "hip grandmother" types who still connect with today's youth and want Lady Gaga's head. We then guillotine those people and use their heads as soccer balls in the next FIFA "spectacle". We then guillotine all the FIFA players and hire the heads as the new anchors for Fox News, where nothing will really change.

Fox News will then recommend we guillotine everyone to prevent terrorism and America will agree because "how many planes have you seen crash into buildings since everyone was guillotined? See? It's working."

Now I don't know what's more stupid: this entry or the very people I'm complaining about.

IT'S OVER!!!!!

If they announced today that the wars in the middle east are officially over as of midnight, I probably wouldn't be as excited and relieved as I am now. Okay, I would, but you get the point. Anyway, FIFA 2010 is ending! The last game is underway! The end of this long highway of bullshit is on the horizon!

For a month I've had to listen to trivial crap about NOTHING until it was ultimately drowned out by vuvuzelas. I've had to listen to endless stats about players I don't care about, teams I don't care about, and a game I don't care about.

For a month I've had to watch Coca-Cola's bullshit advertising with dancing Africans happily gulping down that sugary crap. I've had to watch a bunch of pricks placing bets based on what a FUCKING OCTOPUS tells them.

For a month I've had to put up with brain-dead people shouting "Gooooooooooaaaaaall!"

Basically, for a month I haven't taken a solid shit.

And now the last game is underway! I don't give a rat's ass who wins! I'm actually crossing my fingers, hoping a giant asteroid will fall from the sky and land directly on the stadium with 20 seconds left in the game!

I'm giving everyone one grace day and only one. I know tomorrow everyone from your average Joes to your news networks to your Daily Shows will have to talk about the "big win". So I'm granting ONE day to get your ya-yas out.

After that I don't want to hear "soccer", "Fifa", "Gooooaaal", or "Al Gore" ever again. Thank you.

Sports "Experts"

I was downtown riding the subway last night minding my own business, when all of a sudden the doors slide open and I realize immediately that a hockey game has just ended at the Air Canada Centre. Hoards of loud, drunken, semi-intelligent, 20-something alpha-males pile on board and my quiet night vanishes.

"Here we go again," I thought, "give it about 7 seconds before any hint of intellectual conversation that might have been happening on this train is drowned out by this mob of hockey know-it-alls." Was I correct, you ask? Come on now, of course I was! I'm never wrong.

I just don't understand the appeal of sports talk. Some people can go on and on and on forever talking about something as trivial as a game. I'm looking in your direction, TSN. How can they do this and why would they want to? My God, just enjoy the game and move on with your life. I don't need hours of post-game commentary. Trust me, you're not doing me any favours by rattling off a bunch of scores and player names and sports jargon as I sit there gaping at you, trying to figure out what the hell you're talking about. It's just not important, Brock, it's just not important.

Remember, I'm talking about post-game here. I haven't touched on these walking sports encyclopedias that won't keep their comments to themselves during the game. God, if you do exist, I'm sorry I ever doubted your existence, yada, yada, but I beg you to make these people shut...the fuck...UP! Every 8 seconds, for Pete's sake, they've got to chime in with some meaningless piece of information about a random player.

And I think deep down they know it's meaningless. But they spout off these short bits of trivia anyway because they think other people will hear them and think, "Boy, this guy really knows his stuff." It's a status thing, nothing more. They won't admit it, but I think deep down all they want is for their dumb buddies to get on the phone with ESPN and rave. "Have you heard of my buddy? He really knows a lot about football. He does critiques of different plays and posts them on Youtube. They get ranked pretty high every time. He's really good. Can I give you his Youtube address?...Hello?...Hello?"

Just go home. You're not impressing anyone. Put the beer mug down, hang up the Cheeto-stained jersey, and get a damn job, Brock.