The Best Page in the Universe
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Type of site
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Satire Fratire |
|---|---|
| Owner | Maddox |
| Created by | Maddox (George Ouzounian) |
| Revenue | Unknown |
| Website | maddox.xmission.com |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | None |
| Launched | 1997 |
| Current status | Active |
The Best Page in the Universe is a personal satirical humor website created by George Ouzounian, better known as Maddox, of Salt Lake City, Utah. Launched in 1997 without any high expectations, the website became known by word of mouth.
The Best Page in the Universe originated from a text document that Maddox wrote in 1996 aptly named "fifty things that piss me off!" He gave the list to several people on EFnet's #coders, and the positive response led him to create the website.
Maddox decided to name his site The Best Page in the Universe despite his knowledge that at the time Yahoo! blocked sites with the phrase "the best" in the title from inclusion in its search engine.
On July 15, 2009, Xmission.com, which hosts The Best Page in the Universe, had an Alexa rank of about 16,000, and TheBestPageInTheUniverse.net, which works as an alternative domain for Maddox's website, had an Alexa rank of about 33,000. Maddox himself wrote an article in 2002 illustrating that despite all traffic being generated by word-of-mouth alone, his site was still ranked ahead of major corporations such as McDonald's and Pepsi, who spend millions of dollars on advertising every year.
He launched a competition for people to send him cartoons about himself or his website, most of which are attacks about emails for "more updates." Later, he parodied this himself by stating that now that he's finished with the comic book, he'd be able to "Not update the site more regularly." Entries included a depiction of Maddox leaping out of a computer monitor and smashing two fans' faces together, and a comic strip of a boy checking the website for new content only to find a cartoon of himself that he had posted ten seconds earlier.
The Best Page in the Universe's layout was made sparse primarily to reduce bandwidth costs. Maddox also stated the sparsity protested the many websites containing "fancy HTML" but lacking substantial content. The page is headed with an image of Maddox's face superimposed over a bust of Che Guevara. In the image, Maddox is wearing a beret emblazoned with the Jolly Roger, and an eye patch. Maddox uses this image as a parody of the revolutionary icon. Maddox says that Che Guevara is remembered as "Che the revolutionary," not "Che the pinko", and claims to be neither socialist nor communist. Instead, he often proclaims himself to be a pirate, and typically portrays himself as such in his articles and artwork.
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