The Ugly

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I never cared to call anyone or anything Ugly. So this year's Ugly list had to really have gotten on a nerve, or just produced enough of a mess on the web that it deserves mention in this post. The site in question either left me with a bad taste in my mouth, or showed me how hilarious us humans can be. Here's my list of honorable mentions for 2008:
  • I was going to give Pownce the big Ugly award for this year, but I've talked about them enough, I gave enough of my time to them, and they don't deserve another second of my time. Any company that comes in and shuts something down only to restart it under a different name from scratch has lost my respect completely. 
  • JustinTV, for those who haven't visited the site, is a life casting service. Amid copyright issues that the company have been facing this year, they were hit hard by the suicide of one of their users last fall. The site maintained the site is moderated and I agree with their stance, but something like this has to put a black eye on a service that depends on drama and exhibitionism. 
  • My runner up this year doesn't win because they are ugly, but because they showed us how ugly we can be. The Fail Blog showcases our botched attempts at driving, cooking, and life in general. Oh, wait, the creators of the fail blog are the same people that created the I Can Has Cheezburger site? Epic fail on my part! I still think they deserved a mention.
That leaves our big winner. In the same fashion that fail blog points out our flaws, Passive Aggressive Notes shows us just how passive aggressive we can be. We've all seen notes on refrigerators, or in stores that note a complaint about a particular behavior and sage like advice on how to properly live. This blog highlights the absurdity of such notes and entertains us all at the same time. My note leaving has been cut considerably thanks to Passive Aggressive Notes.

So that's my roundup on the web for this year. I plugged a lot of sites this year, and these all had the most impact. I wanted to name some of the obvious and not so obvious sites that have affected most of us this year with knowledge that they will affect us just as much in the next year. Let's see what happens in 2009. My prediction is for a lot more ugly.

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