Fierce.com: The Exclusive Book for Web Elitists [Paperback]

Tor Hyams (Author), David Scharff (Author), Matt Hyams (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 14, 1999

Equal parts Siskel and Ebert and Beavis and Butthead, Tor Hyams and David Scharff review more than 125 sites on the World Wide Web. Known for their brutal honesty, cutting opinions, and feverish Loony Tune-style writing, Fierce.com is the most entertaining of online reference tools. Fierce.com rates Web sites as Fierce (the highest of honors), Unfierce (the farthest from Fierce), Not Quite (close but no cigar), Erotic, Useful, and Ridiculous. Divided into 17 chapters, Fierce.com covers everything from government agencies to health and beauty, television to music, erotica to religion.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"We sell lies," write Tor Hyams and David Scharff. "Fierce.com is our excuse for spilling misinformation on the public's lap each week." Well, sort of. Actually, it's a Web site where they post weekly reviews of other people's Web sites, and Fierce.com: The Exclusive Book for Web Elitists contains a couple hundred of them culled from the first few years of the site's existence.

Be advised, however: this is just a collection of Web site reviews approximately the same way The Divine Comedy is just a bunch of notes from Dante's dream journal. Highly opinionated (verging on warped), these speed-typed, barely edited write-ups only occasionally provide a straight-line glimpse of the sites they purport to critique. More often the review is a pretext for a deranged rant about evil alien show dogs, an erotic reverie on getting turned on by Archie comics as a child, or some other peek into the oddly charming inner lives of cousins Scharff and Hyams.

Lamentably, the sheer quantity of reviews gathered here, combined with the authors' off-the-cuff, Web-native style, means the reviewers' efforts themselves often deserve their own most lukewarm rating: Not Quite. But Hyams' brother Matt's humorous interludes (trippy riffs on, say, obscure mail-order products or U.S. diplomatic efforts to get a look at Saddam Hussein's nether regions) are never less than laugh-out-loud hilarious. And overall, the reviewers hit their marks too, providing a sharply personal snapshot of the Web that earns them their own highest praise: this book is Fierce. --Julian Dibbell

From Library Journal

On their web page, Fierce.com, the authors offer highly opinionated reviews of mostly iconoclastic sites, ranging from the animal kingdom (Big Dave's Cow Page) to the erotic (Hot-N-Nasty Toons) to Zines (The Smoking Gun). This collection of reviews is not the Internet Yellowpages but rather a sourcebook for net surfing connoisseurs.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows; First Edition edition (July 14, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568581351
• ISBN-13: 978-1568581354
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,019,383 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Laugh? Only if you're still breathing!, June 27, 2000

By 

A gal from Down Under (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fierce.com: The Exclusive Book for Web Elitists (Paperback)

When the news got out here in Australia that Fierce.com had finally landed in the "real" world, I raced out and bought a copy of "The Exclusive Book for Web Elitists" faster than you can say "Happy Hour at Sizzlers". Being a Fierce fan for longer than I care to remember, these guys have made me laugh over and over. And continue to do so now offline as well as on.

Tor and David are two of the craziest, abrasive, outspoken and out-of-control guys (with no particular quality attributed exclusively to either one) it's ever been my pleasure to come in contact with. And Matt is just plain unhinged. But all are hilariously funny and do the best "baffling with bulls**t" routine I've ever come across.

Just buy the book - it'll make you laugh, it'll probably make you cry and it will certainly make you look at the Web as it should be viewed - with one eye on the screen and the other on just how crazy and unreal (in the true sense of the word) this virtual reality world called the "WWW" really is. In other words - cross-eyed. (Well, it's worked for them!)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous Book, August 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fierce.com: The Exclusive Book for Web Elitists (Paperback)

An excellent resource for "The best of the best", websites on the Internet. I will be visiting all of these websites and utilizing this book for quite some time to come. It was this book that brought me to Badpuppy.com, which I find to be the biggest best Gay & Lesbian Portal on the Internet. At the very least I now have a home on Badpuppy where I'm with many others who go through the trials and tribulations and the lifestyle questions the Gay & Lesbian community have come to expect.

Thank you Fierce.com for bringing all of these fine sites to the surface. I will be purchasing your book for years to come.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We should all be so Fierce!, July 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Fierce.com: The Exclusive Book for Web Elitists (Paperback)

The Fierce-sters have been there, done that, and are eminently qualified to direct us to the ultimate best of the Web. Follow their advice without hesitation. You'll waste less time and find more quality in your Internet surfing. Not to mention enjoying their fascinating reviews.