I love news.

Real news, fake news, disturbing news, gross news but I don't like fark.com.

The ethos at fark is juvenile, right wing and way to bushy.

Too bad. It could be a lot of fun.

Drew Curtis makes a good living holding the media up to the ridicule it richly deserves. Sure, it's puerile, childish, and depending on the time of day, politically slanted, but where else can you flame a right-wing idiot mercilessly, have him come back for more, keep pounding on him all afternoon long, and not get banned by the administrator? Not at "Free" Republic. Not at Little Green Footballs. Not even at military.com, which claims to be free of political bias. Usually, when right-wing idiots post their pre-composted bullshit on Fark, they can expect utter humiliation from the other side, that is, if they were intelligent enough to know when they were getting "p0wn3d."

Browse the comments of any popular thread on Fark and you'll see that the posters are of approximately the same mind as Drew when it comes to the media. The mainstream media does indeed spend way too much time on non-news items, or on sensational news that is best left to the local media where the story originated. Unfortunately, sensationalism sells, bad news does not. Rupert Murdoch knows that very well.

I have been a Farker for years, and Drew Curtis is a friend of mine, so I'm really getting a kick out of this review.

Drew's an expert on this garbage that the mass media passes off as news because he deals with it every single day. Drew's point in this book is not that there isn't a place for this sort of stuff; his point is that the mass media's obsession with this stuff is hurting America.

The story about the crazy archaeologist, which Mr. Manjoo dismisses so cavalierly, is part of a chapter which addresses a major failing in the mass media, called "Equal Time for Nutjobs." Let me put this a different way: the Swiftboat Liars were roundly discredited early on in the 2004 presidential election cycle -- in other words, they were nutjobs -- yet they were given equal time over and over again by a credulous mass media. Does anyone honestly think this didn't hurt America?

Mr. Manjoo says

But there's an obvious problem with Curtis' claim that none of these articles was worthy of publication: When the pieces were published, he posted links to them on Fark, driving tens of thousands of readers their way.

Mr. Manjoo completely misses the point of the book completely: It's not about Drew Curtis. It's about Mass media ignoring real and important stories while concentrating on the silly crap and useless entertainment that belongs at Fark.

This statement also reveals something about this "review" - it appears that Mr. Manjoo had a preconception about the book ("How dare Drew Curtis, who makes his living from offbeat news, criticize the mass media that spreads it?") and cherry-picked examples to support that.

If he was willing to look past that, maybe he would have seen a book filled with important and relevant media criticism that will resonate with Salon readers, who come here for real news that is an alternative to Mass Media garbage.

Finally, any credibility this review has is utterly destroyed when Mr. Manjoo says calls the mass media's singular obsession with the Runaway Bride -- with a focus and tenacious reporting that is sorely missing from our national misadventure in Iraq -- "a good story." Maybe it's a good story if you're one of those journalistic hacks Drew spends the entire book exposing. For the rest of us it was something quite different.

If Mr. Manjoo hadn't made this a story about Drew Curtis, and instead addressed the content and criticisms within the book, he could have done Salon readers a service. Instead, this reads like a David Broder or Joe Klein commentary on the "uncivil" netroots.

I read Fark almost every day, and the predominant political mood there isn't right or left wing, it's Libertarian. So threads about guns or religion turn into feeding frenzies pretty quickly.

For people with bad senses of humor and bad haircuts.

The book sounds interesting but ultimately seems as pointless and forgettable as the types of news it labels as such.

Warning: This message forum will soon be overrun with Farkers, just as soon as this article is "greenlit" on Fark (perhaps it already is) and they swarm over here to defend Drew and/or post links to photos of cats eating invisible sandwiches.

I use Fark regularly because it has all the news, from the weirdest stuff to the most important.

In spite of Wil Wheaton's flimsy rationalization to defend his friend, Farhad Manjoo's central evaluation rings true: Drew Curtis has written a book decrying the very type of news that has made him a wealthy man.

It's sort of like if Ray Croc had written a book warning against the poor nutritional value of cheap-beef hamburgers and deep-fried potato slivers, all the while raking in McDonald's profits.

I was tempted to buy Drew's "Fark" book at the store, and spent some time skimming its sections and reading some of its examples. My main impression was that it would be a very unenjoyable read, because Curtis comes across as remarkably pedantic and sour compared to the wry tone of Fark's home-page headlines.

Do we really need the king of dumb news to tell us that dumb news is dumb?

Fark was recently overhauled and redesigned. The 'moderators' as such have become draconian intolerant assholes. Then poof a book of Drew's brain vomit pops up. Can a sale to Google or Yahoo be far behind?

And now Drew Curtis wants to whine that the website that made him wealthy is promoting an ethos that's ugly? Fuck you Drew. Poser. Go worship a beer bottle.

I used to spend a lot of time on Fark. But I haven't visited the site in years. Why?

It just got kind of boring. Separating out the Boobies posts was probably a mistake; kind of like separating out the yeast from dough. And the stories in general got less interesting. Or...perhaps the rise of blogs is part of the reason. I get a lot more out of reading the odd little stories that my friends recommend, than out of the stuff that Drew picks.

Plus, let's face it: there ARE a lot of trolls and idiots among the Farkigentsia. They used to be a lot funnier, in aggregate.