NEWSLETTER: ISSUE 23: OUR FAVOURITE STORIES THIS YEAR
This Week:
- Our favourite stories this year
- Photoshop the Queen
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B3ta email 23 - 21 DEC 2001 - "We remember the web"
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: 2001 IN REVIEW
It's has been a funny old year on the Internet,
half our friends lost their jobs and agencies
have been dropping like flies.
However, there was some fun stuff too.
Here are our the best stories that ended up in
our inbox this year.
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: Britney is Dead - Hoax
Nerd bloke makes page saying that Britney has
died in a road accident. World panics. BBC gets
angry. Page taken down. Oh well.
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: Hank the Dwarf dies
Poor little Hank - he was Howard Sterns little
side kick. Like many dwarfs before him - the
booze got him.
(BTW: Hank was once voted the "Internets'
Most Beautiful Person" - after Stern organised
a grass roots email campaign.)
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: Scary Muscle Boy Pictures
Yuck! What's that in our inbox? It's a
SCHWARZENEGGER HANSON - a nine year old boy with
enormous muscles. Stop it! You're making us feel
queasy.
http://www.richardsandrak.com/
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: Friends Reunited
Do you really want to know how well your old
school mates are doing? Friends Reunited
thought so.
Then users filled the site with nasty comments
about their old teachers being child molesters,
and got the site owners into legal hot water.
Oops.
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: My Cat Hates You
Is your cat angry? Did you share the joke with
a million bored cat lovers? Many did.
http://www.mycathatesyou.com
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: All Your Base Are Belong To Us
This phrase - a poorly translated bit of Japanese
from an old console game - went from nerd joke
to a global phenomenon. It was cool until the
twatty bloke on the next desk started saying it.
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: Peter Pan found his Tinker-Bell.
Huh? I don't know - some weird bloke dressed in
tights - managed to pull a woman with similar
interests. Isn't that nice?
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: Bert/Bin Laden is EVIL.
Cool - some bloke made a weird Bert from Sesame
Street image. Then a poster-maker used the web
to source images for his Bin Laden poster.
This is used in pro-Taliban demonstration. A
photo is taken - ends up on the news wires
- and back on the net. We have a closed media
loop. Prepare for the universe to collapse.
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: Geri the Dog
Popbitch - the music industry gossip newsletter
- was looking for images of popstars with
dogs - and used Google to find a mutt called
Geri.
They mentioned it - with the detail that the
dog was housed at an animal sanctuary & needed
a new owner.
This story had legs and reached the tabloids
and TV. Yay for animal interest stories & the
power of the Google search engine.
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: Kung-fu Chimp Video
What is it with you people? Do you think
monkeys are still funny? It didn't stop you
mailing this video to each other.
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: Tourist Guy
This photo turned up in everyone's email. A man
standing on the WTC with a plane behind him.
This was supposedly taken 10 seconds before the
disaster - but turned out to be a photoshopped
fake.
Thousands more images appeared - with him
in front of different world disasters - all
photoshopped nonsense. Then a Brazilian man
came forward - saying that it was him.
Volkswagen gave him a huge wad of cash - and
he turned out to be a liar.
Are you following this? Do you care? Tourist
guy, FUCK OFF!
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: J-Lo Email Bollocks.
Oh god. We so wanted this to be true. An email
transcript between Jenifer Lopez's publicist
and some drone at Warner Brothers arguing
about holding up a film unless Lopez was
credited as "J-Lo". We were excited for
a moment... a glimpse into the mundane
mechanics of supporting an insane diva's
celebrity... But no - it was a joke. Arse.
Didn't stop it going half way round the
world and back again.
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: WTC disaster closes the BBC site
This was terrifying.
We were sitting in the office with no TV or
radio. A text message comes in saying "plane
crash in New York."
We go straight to the BCC site, and it's down.
We go to the BBC site, and it's down.
We had to use message boards such as Slashdot,
Metafilter & Popbitch to work out what on earth
was going on. Scary - but their news coverage
turned out to be better than the mainstream.
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: Napster Closing Down
Arse. Fuck. Piss. No more free music. No more
downloading EVERY PULP B-SIDE EVER MADE.
(So it wasn't all bad then.)
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: Boo Closing
Did you want to buy your clothes over the
Internet with a cartoon avatar guiding your
decisions? Apparently not. They spent 10
million quid & closed. You can now read the
inside story of their fall in their book
"BooHoo" - and if the PR is to be believed,
they've already sold the film rights.
Jammy little shits.
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: "I saw an arab... and he told me ..."
Did you fall for this shit? Did you phone
your mates and tell them to get the hell out
of Central London. Did you say, "It's true! My
mate told me! And her mate told her"? Then
sorry - you should read snopes2.com and learn
a little about urban legends.
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: That girl WITHOUT leukaemia - she didn't die!
Simple story: Girl writes web page. Girl
pretends to be dying. People get upset and send
flowers. Girl dies. People try and attend
funeral. Oops. The girl made it all up. Not
everything on the Internet is true. Shock.
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: Couple Court on Webcam - Shagging
Yay. This was great. Boy buys webcam. Boy
invites girl round. Boy shags girl. 3rd party
takes stills from the video feed - and posts
them all over the web.
From obscurity to celebrity in two days.
And then back again.
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: "I send you this for your advice"..
Oh God. The fucking Sircam virus. This was
annoying. And the once with the 7 dwarfs? And
the one that just crashes your email package
when you preview an email?
Argh!
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: Queen mum fake death rumours
"Look it's true. My friend at C4 said so.
They're holding off breaking the news until the
weekend."
This story got a bit of press - but the old dear
turned out not to be dead.
However - we can confirm that David Icke is
right: she IS a lizard. (She can't
transmogrify her body any more - and the
bandages on her legs are hiding scales.)
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: Robbie Williams isn't a nazi
Did you see this one? A fantastic animation of
Robbie Williams marching over swastikas to a
bomtempi organ version of Rock DJ. It was great
- until RW's lawyers closed the site down.
Bugger.
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: Jamie Oliver is a Cunt
If you missed this, then you are blind. 1000s
of images of the fat-tongued-one all doctored
to rip the piss. This was a combined Internet
community effort. The web - we salute you -
for this was your finest hour. Woo.
http://www.hairytongue.com/gallery/fattongue/
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: B3TA IMAGE CHALLENGE
Results - winner - new challenge.
Each week we run a competition to test your
creative skills. We find an image, and you
Photoshop it to death.
Last week was Jesus website.
http://b3ta.com/challenge/jesus/
The winner? Andy206's Titanic Jesus.
http://www.andyspad.net/images/jesus4.jpg
This weeks challenge? Next year is the Queens
Golden Jubilee. Celebrate in style.
http://b3ta.com/challenge/queen/
BTW: We can't take submissions via email.
For details on hosting images elsewhere, please
read ...
http://b3ta.com/feautures/faq/
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: END BIT
We're not going to publish a newsletter next
week. We want a holiday. However, we're leaving
the message board open, so have fun.
(BTW: If you are a coder, and bored this Xmas
we would really love you to think about making
a game. Go on. Hide from your family this
Christmas and make something good.)
http://b3ta.com/board/
Subscribe: [email protected]
Unsubscribe: [email protected]
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: Thanks this year to:
Cal, Joel, Neil, Pep, Tom, Lucy, AndyK, Nicey,
TheWife, Hal9000 and everyone who contributed
so much to the message board, weblog, and image
challenges. You all rock.
