Suck.com

Suck.com was one of the earliest ad-supported content sites on the Internet. It featured daily editorial content on a wide variety of topics, including politics and pop-culture and was targeted at Generation X. Their tagline, and mascots, were "A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun". The site remains online despite having no new content published since 2001 and several months of downtime in 2015.

Suck.com was founded in 1995 by writer Joey Anuff and editor Carl Steadman who created daily comically cynical commentary with a self-obsessed and satiric edge. The writing was accentuated by the art of cartoonist Terry Colon. In 1996, they brought on the writing talent of Heather Havrilesky, who provided the whiny, sarcastic voice of her alter ego Polly Esther in their most popular column, titled Filler.

The name of the site was chosen to slip a domain name with possibly offensive connotations past Network Solutions, who controlled the InterNIC system for the distribution of domain names before ICANN took over that authority. The name also described the nature of "news aggregator" sites that "sucked" stories from the web and published them in magazine like formats.

In 1997, Suck published a compilation of their most popular essays in Suck: Worst-Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising and the Internet (ISBN ).

Other than the distinctive artwork of Terry Colon, the site also had many other characteristics that tied their daily articles together. The main text of each article was restricted to a table only 200 pixels wide. Most articles would feature links within the flow of the content rather than as in labeled footnotes or references, foreshadowing the same technique in modern weblogs.

In July 2000, following a sharp downturn in Internet investment, suck.com merged with Feed Magazine to create Automatic Media. Their concept was to streamline their operations and collaborate on boutique operations with low staffing costs. Their joint project Plastic.com was founded with only 4 staffed employees. Despite the faithful cult following, and a combined reader base of over 1 million, Automatic Media folded in June 2001. On June 8, 2001, Suck.com declared that they were "Gone Fishin'" indefinitely, and the site ceased to publish new content. Regarding the indefinite hiatus, co-founder Joey Anuff said, “It was a shame. On the other hand...it’s shocking how long Suck lasted.”

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