Suck: Worst-Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising, and the Internet (Hardwired) (Paperback)

~ Joey Anuff (Editor), (Editor), (Illustrator)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One of the most entertaining and important e-zines on the Web (even after "selling out" to HotWired in 1995), Suck dishes out cooler-than-thou commentary and daily unapologetic satire on pretty much any subject that deserves it. Suck: Worst Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising, and the Internet, a collection of some of the more memorable columns from the site's long (in Web years) history, marks the first foray of the Sucksters into the world of print. Can an animated musical of Terry Colon's cartoon versions of the Suck staff be far behind?

Some of the unfortunate recipients of attention in the "repurposed content" include PBS newsman Jim Lehrer, Niketown, and Slate, Microsoft's foray into the overcrowded e-zine market. Terry Colon's distinctive illustrations pepper each column, but none of the classic narrative cartoon collaborations between Colon and columnist Polly Esther are included. This omission (as well as other missing favorites) reflects the difficult task of selecting a few dozen columns from three years of daily contributions. Or perhaps the duo is simply negotiating a book deal of their own.

Suck includes hyperlinked rants as sidebars, so you can--if you wish--roughly re-create the wandering-attention-span phenomenon associated with reading Suck online. Some readers may find the collected Sucksters too clever for their own good (if you've used the term "smart alec" in a sentence recently, this may not be your cup of tea), and readers who find themselves too cool for Suck will not be impressed. Anyone who has a sense of humor, however, especially one that finds glee in the lampooning of large media conglomerations (such as the one that employs the book's authors), will enjoy the offerings of Suck.

Product Description

As the longest-running and most-often-imitated daily column on the Internet, "Suck" has generated plenty of buzz on and off the net. Here, cofounder Joey Anuff collects the column's most provocative words and pictures.

Product Details

• Paperback: 151 pages
• Publisher: Hardwired; 1st edition (November 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1888869275
• ISBN-13: 978-1888869279
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #508,916 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #52 in	Books > Entertainment > Humor > Computers & Internet
  #90 in	Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Communication > Media And Society

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The perfect bathroom reader., November 9, 1998

By	[e-mail] (the Raleigh, North Carolina US) - See all my reviews

An extremely funny book, that demands a level of media-cultural-computer sophistication most do not posess. 'Spy' Magazine died (the old 'Spy, when it was funny) and came back to life as this. Buy ! Buy! Buy! (Not actually three individual copies, but, well, you get the idea.)

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the last puff of smoke from a dying breed, January 2, 2006

By	Tim Nekritz (Oswego, NY United States) - See all my reviews

Since the Sucksters took their eternal summer vacation in June 2001 and the Web site at last fulfilled the e-zine's running joke by changing ownership to an adult-entertainment portal in December 2005, this is all that's left of the smartest, shrewdest and funniest site to emerge amidst the hot air of the Dot-Com Rise and Fall of the 1990s.

Where else can you find an acerbic, pseudonymmed writer dismiss The Fugees as "reconstituted adult rock masquerading as hip-hop"? Or the pinpoint assertion that if you drop your kid off at any mall, "he'll quickly learn that community and commodity are not easily discernible from each other"? Or: "The only thing that kept Burning Man out of Business Week was that no one would admit to making -- or seeking -- a profit"? And really, you can find as good or better a bon mot on any of the pages of this book.

Even from the mid-1990s, this book is a breath a fresh air from today's world of multimedia mergers, where reporters chase each others' tales in conflating and inflating pre-conceived notions and prepackaged soundbytes. Who today proclaims as forcefully -- or anywhere near as literately -- that the emperor has no clothes even as the mainstream media sources compete for more vivid adjectives to describe the non-existent garments?

While the book has its faults and there were certainly better essays than some of the selections, it more than holds its own with any contemporary commentary. A full decade before VH1 announced its sure-to-be-craptacular series "Web Junk 20" as the latest lowest-common-denomination demon spawn of TV and Internet, Suck explained why attempts at merging the two media only seem to cull the worst of each and draw into sharp detail the differences -- not the similarities -- between technology's long-lost kin. With today's breathless tech reporters and hypesters trying to convince you that watching a movie on an iPod is somehow as good as enjoying it in widescreen, and a supplicant media (owned by those releasing those movies) coo their approval, the absence of sarcastic outsider wisdom by the likes of Suck is more missed than ever.

While this book will not cure what ails society, consider it a drinking binge from the fountain of knowledge that won't leave you with a hangover in a stranger's apartment. If the drink is bittersweet given Suck's fate, at least it proves satisfying.

5.0 out of 5 stars A moment in time, frozen onto the pages of a book, December 11, 2009

By	Michael A. Duvernois (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

The [...] folks had an aesthetic, a world-view, and a slacker mission to uplift the web surfers of the day. Then they were gone, the only remains were little bits of [...] and some cartoon rabbits. Oh yeah, and this book. It's a (scathing) view of the days when the web was first in the crosshairs of the advertisers, the spammers, the marketers, and all of those other sleazy folks who were looking to take away our great online thing.