Website Hall of Infamy
March, 2004 Winner: Custom Visions: Altered Toys
From the people behind last month's Website Hall of Fame inductee Furby Plastic Surgery comes this site where you can create your own art projects from your toys, including a Furby refurbished into a member of the Borg from Star Trek, a Furby with vampire fangs, a Shelby with spikes growing from its shell, a Michael Jordan doll turned into a cyborg, Fisher Price toy people remade into pimps and bums, and much more. This site is full of twisted mutant toys whose creators seem to be reminiscent of Sid from the first Toy Story movie. This site proves that some people have too much time on their hands.
February, 2004 Winner: Furby Plastic Surgery
Some people have way too much time on their hands. Otherwise, how can you explain a site like this one, which is dedicated to altering a formerly hot toy that has now faded into obscurity? This site not only provides a service for people who think their Furby's looks need altering but it also gives complete instructions on how you can do it yourself at home if you don't feel like shipping your Furby all the way to New Zealand (where the site is based) to be operated on.
This site also contains actual samples of Furbys who have gone through their own versions of Extreme Makeover and some of them are downright creepy.
Of course this site brings back memories of the big Furby craze of 1998 when some people used to fight each other in stores over the interactive critter while others sold the $30 toy on eBay for prices that went as high as $300. To this day you can still find Furby gathering dust in the bargain bins for $5. In some ways it's a cheap way of experimenting with performing plastic surgery on a toy. In other ways, it's really not worth the time unless you have so much excess time on your hands that you need to kill some of it.
UPDATE (August 3, 2004): This site is now back online so anyone who previously missed out on learning how to alter their own Furbys now have a second chance to do so.
UPDATE (July 13, 2004): This site is now off-line. Click here for a screenshot of this site in its prime.
January, 2004 Winner: Save Karyn
A few years ago I inducted a whole slew of webcam sites into this Website Hall of Infamy because I felt that it's the one Internet phenomenon that should disappear completely. Since that induction, a number of webcam sites that I mentioned have fulfilled my wish, including JenniCam.org, the webcam site that started the whole phenomenon and briefly turned Jennifer Ringley into a minor celebrity during the late 1990's. Well, JenniCam.org has finally shut down for good as of January 1, 2004 and it's destined to become a footnote in any future books on the history of the World Wide Web.
In a way it's really no great loss that Jenni is now off-line. In her prime her only claim to fame was that she let a webcam take pictures of her 24 hours a day. On the surface, it seemed like a novel way of using the Internet's potential for creative off-beat sites built on shoestring budgets but, in reality, the site itself wasn't really that interesting. To see what I mean, check out these screenshots I made of her site a few years ago by clicking here, here, here, here, and here. Sure there was the occasional flashes of nudity and the rare times when she had sex in front of her webcam but a visitor was far more likely to encounter something like those screenshots than something erotic or racy.
Now that Jennifer Ringley is off the World Wide Web, I'd like to nominate another person I'd like to see disappear as well—Karyn Bosnak of Save Karyn.com.
Like Jenni, Karyn became a celebrity in recent years due to her website. The one big difference is that Karyn's site focused exclusively on raising money for her favorite cause—herself.
Karyn is a twentysomething Brooklyn woman who had a big problem. She became a shopaholic who liberally used her credit cards until she amassed $20,000 in debt. So she decided to put up a website where anyone can make a donation to her so she can pay her debts off.
At least Karyn was upfront and honest about the real reason why she went through the trouble of putting up a website. She was smart enough to sell some of the loot that she amassed while going into debt on eBay. But her original site was just one big begging "gimmee money" statement that is an online equivalent of a homeless panhandler on a street corner.
Amazingly Karyn's site received a lot of publicity in the mainstream media. What's more amazing is that she actually got people to send her money so she could pay off her credit card debts entirely.
With Karyn having reached the goal of her site, you'd think she would shut it down and slink back into obscurity. Well, you've guessed wrong. She managed to write a book about her experience and she now hawks merchandise from her site, such as shirts that read "I Helped Save Karyn."
Something is wrong here. This is a person who got her own self into trouble because she was irresponsible with her credit cards and she got rewarded with public recognition due to her out-of-control spending habits, not because she did something artistic or heroic or made an important scientific discovery that is bound to affect human history (such as a cure for AIDS).
Besides Karyn isn't the first person in history who has overshopped her way into debt. Over the years I've met people who were in her position but they didn't go around setting up websites trying to beg for money. Instead they did stuff like cutting up their credit cards and getting second or even third jobs to pay off the debt.
One more thing, why was Karyn ever worth saving in the first place? What makes Karyn so damned special that would entice anyone to consider donating to her cause? It's not like she is a major humanitarian who has simply fallen on hard times.
Jennifer Ringley did charge a subscription fee to her site. But at least people who gave money to Jenni got something back in return—new updated photos of Jenni every minute 24 hours a day while non-members only got a new photo every 15 minutes. (Okay, I'll admit that this argument isn't very valid during the last three years of JenniCam's existence when Jenni got a full-time job outside the home and subscribers were treated to shots of an empty chair most of the time.) Granted, most of the shots were headshots of Jenni at her computer and she stated on her site that while nudity may happen from time to time, she wasn't going to go out of her way to strip naked for the benefit of ther subscribers. But at least her subscribers got something in return.
In contrast, people who sent money to Karyn Bosnak got nothing in return.
Save Karyn.com is also responsible for starting a revolting Internet trend towards online begging sites, most of which have failed to replicate Save Karyn's success mainly because 1) they weren't the first ones to have a begging site to go online—Karyn was—and 2) there are so many begging sites on the Internet that most of them get lost in the shuffle. Some of the sites might earn some money but the webmasters of these sites would make more money working two or more jobs.
What's more, unlike mainstream charities, many of whom are tracked by groups like the Better Business Bureau, there is no way to really verify if these begging sites are genuine or not. It's possible that a website touting the woes of an unemployed thirtysomething mother who is desperate for money to help pay for her infant son's cancer treatments is really the work of a college-age slacker who is looking for an alternative way of getting money without having to work full-time.
I once had a strange experience when I attempted a parody of Save Karyn a while back, called Aid Kim. I thought it would be an interesting way to earn some money through this site. Unlike Karyn, this site offers more content (like animations and this Website Hall of Infamy entry that you're reading right now) and I really wanted to earn some money for my hard work on this site. Even though I included a link to this site's Disclaimer page and I included language throughout Aid Kim that would lead an average person to conclude that it's a parody, the only responses I got regarding Aid Kim were e-mails from other begging sites asking me to please mention them. I got so many e-mails that I had to remove my e-mail address from the Contact Me page and replace it with a statement saying that Aid Kim is a parody and explaining that if I received enough money from donations, I could devote myself to Twisted Unicorn on a full-time basis and include new content on a weekly basis. (As of this writing, I have yet to receive any money that enables me to work on Twisted Unicorn full-time.)
Even though Karyn Bosnak has paid off her debts, she still maintains an interest in the designer goods that got her into debt in the first place. Check out her Pretty Nice Wardrobe page, where she provides hints on how to order designer clothing off eBay. It doesn't seem to occur to her that if she would drop her obsession with designer names, she could buy decent looking clothes within her budget. Over the years I've bought sharp looking clothes from places like Ross, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Old Navy, Marshall's, Kohl's, The Burlington Coat Factory, and Target. I've heard of people who've bought clothes from yard sales, rummage sales, consignment stores, and thrift stores that not only looked fashionable but they looked almost new. Sure, the clothes may not have the name of some high-end designer but it is possible to look nice and fashionable on a budget.
Unless Karyn makes a habit of sticking to her new-found frugal ways, it's possible that her Save Karyn.com could be reverted back into a begging site again. If that happens, I hope people will ignore her pleas for money because she really needs to learn how to live within her budget like a responsible adult.