"If I Said Anything To Offend You It Was Purely Intentional" (insults.net)

Member Name: Tcraze84

Product:	insults.net
Date:	13/10/01 (507 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funny, just about.

Disadvantages: Puerile, juvenile, and obvious, occasionally.

Help, I think I'm a degenerate. Not content with sharing with you the strange lifestyles and habits found within Towniehaters (http://www.towniehaters.com), and the multinational explicit content located at http://www.notam.uio.no/~hcholm/altlang/stat.html, home of The Alternative Dictionary's swearwords and obscenities; I bring you this: Insults.net. Another site in the long(ish) line of sweary, kinda nasty sites, the site pledges to bring you "some interesting, informative, humorous, educational, you name it - insults, insulting quotes, sayings, put-downs and acidic quotations!". Nonsensical, of course - but somehow, intriguing nonetheless.

I should probably give you, the reader, some kind of warning here. Not that it's really necessary - surely you've got the basic idea of the site already, but yeah: explicit language and content in this opinion. Probably. OK? Actually, it's not OK if you're not OK with the site's content, but I'm sure insults.net doesn't care.

Part of the HumourHub.com network, insults.net, alongside other such comic gems as Scatty.com and Excuses.co.uk, is pretty self-explanatory. It pulls no punches in what actually makes up the site but, bizarrely, insults, degrades and blasphemes in a fashion that is ultimately, much more cultured and highbrow than some of its Internet counterparts. Let me make this clear: insults.net still is offensive, sure. It's also borderline racist, sexist, and any other '..ist' you might care to think of - and at times, the site doesn't just cross the line, but leaves it behind amidst a midst of quotation and satire. I say culture; I mean it. This has culture, but only culture, only intelligence, only restraint for an online insults site. Otherwise, it's bad. But if you've visited the likes of The Alternative Dictionary on my recommendations, or otherwise, before, then insults.net will be relatively tame, 'k?

Culture
schmulture - there's still lots here that will offend, shock and outrage. There's also stuff that'll make you laugh out loud. If you're anything like me, you'll be doing both at the same time, too. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing - insults.net most certainly isn't to be taken too seriously, there's no doubt about it. It's humorous - yeah, offensively humorous too - but only in the style of television programmes such as Bottom or Jackass - two shows with a high level of tongue-in-cheek content.

And whilst the likes of The Alternative Dictionary exist in a sprawling mass of poorly-constructed site design and indexes, insults.net is a bit different. That's why it's cultured. It's hard, really hard, to feel anything rebellious or dirty upon visiting a site that is as well designed, as well presented, as this. Technically, insults.net is impressive. But HTML aside, it's more than acceptable in other places. There's none of the near-illiterate waffling from towniehaters.com here - grammatically, the site is more than passable, which is a shame almost, because there's nothing funnier than an insulting, offensive site of which so much humour lies within its own, er, doing. You know what I mean. Corporate, crafted, clever (sort of). There; insults.net. Maybe. You get the picture though. Adopting a traditional side-bar/main page navigation scheme, coupled with graphical buttons and advertisements to get you to where you want, or don't want, to go, you won't be confused by this site. Image doesn't matter, particularly on such sites such as this, where the actual textual content is so very important, but I'll tell ya anyway. It's got a side menu. It's got a greyish background. I can't distinguish shades of colours, you know. It's got a few cartoon illustrations. And that's it, visually. Oh, oh, and it's got insults: loads of 'em. Offended? Wanna give praise?
Here: try mailing them on webmaster@insults.net - they probably won't reply, but you'll get a sense of well-being, communication and interactivity doing it. If you want it, that is.

Most sites like this suck. Some suck, in a slightly more positive way. The reason being, probably, is that none of 'em have got enough content to keep your impatient little minds occupied for more than ten minutes to bother bookmarking and revisiting. Insults.net is different. There's loads here for you to wade your obscenity-hungry brains through. Loads. Really. Essentially though - and thanks largely to the organisation of the site itself - it's split into, ooh, about twenty sections. Maybe nineteen important ones. Maybe I can't count either. If you've got a specific person/people/country/whatever in mind, there's a handy search function on the front page. Not sure if it's actually useful; whether anybody will actually use it, ever, but it's there. And, besides the 'main' content of the site - which I'll be moving onto shortly - there's two basic features. The first, the imaginatively-titled Random Insult Generator, does just that - generates number upon number of random insults for you. Simply narrow (or expand) your target by categories such as gender, political standing, intensity of insult, appearance etc, click the button, and there you have it. True, the end result's probably laughably pathetic - but then, mildly amusing for all of, ooh, two minutes. At least. The other, 'How Do I Swear In...?' is like The Alternative Dictionary's (http://www.notam.uio.no/~hcholm/altlang/stat.html ) younger brother. It's nowhere near as good, nor as comprehensive, but does however give you a fairly decent index of how to swear in a wide variety of languages, worldwide. Still nothing listed under Xhosan though, unfortunately.

And that brings us to Insults.net proper. Which, unsurprisingly, includes the, e
r, insults. Helpfully categorised into 16 highly cross-referenced sections, simply take your pick from the likes of Graves & Epitaphs through to Sports, and you're away. There's loads here. Not to say that you'll maintain your interest throughout, but there's still enough there to last a while anyway.

Around The World is possibly the most politically-incorrect of all the site's categories, consisting wholly of "Insults and insulting quotes about.." a wide range of major nations, continents and cultures, with contributions from traditional proverbs, through to, er, Billy Connelly. This is where the thinly-veiled crossover from basic decency to mild racism occurs, and whilst it's not out-and-out hatred, ever, there's more than enough thought/anger-provoking quotes and descriptions here, thank you. Sure, some aren't offensive - some are vaguely truthful - but all are stereotypical, biting and vindictive - if not, at times, sarcastically so. An old Russian saying lists two types of Chinese people - "those who give bribes, and those who take them", while Barry Humphries' contributions go as far as "to live in Australia permanently is rather like going to a party and dancing all night with your mother". Bonzer.

The appropriately-timed Hindu saying "trust a Brahman before a snake , and a snake before a harlot, and a harlot before an Afghan" is nestled somewhere within the 'Asia' category, whilst, closer to home, Duncan Spaeth - probably not the biggest patriot out there, states "I know why the sun never sets on the British Empire:God would never trust an Englishman in the dark", harshly. And there's more, but you can find the rest out yourself.

Following category - the newly-added Chatups And Put-downs, raises more of a smile than any other section on-site. Again, split into descriptive subcategories, here lie anecdotes for any unwanted approaches. Y
ou'll have heard of loads of them, inevitably, but there are a few gems here. You just have to know where to look. Listed under the section marked 'Trying To Be Romantic' is this excellent comeback for the most confident of women:

"Q: Has anybody ever told you how beautiful you are?
A: Yes, loads of people."

Elsewhere, there's better, probably, with clever lines such as this,

"Man: I'd like to call you. What's your number?
Woman: It's in the phone book.
Man: But I don't know your name.
Woman: That's in the phone book too."

Though, obviously, the line between taste is inevitably soon crossed - and in the subcategory of 'Blatant Innuendo' lie some true classics. Here's just one for size:

"Man: What would you say to a little f**k?
Woman: Leave me alone, little f**k."

Hilarious. But unfortunately, a fatal flaw of insults.net is its sheer level of inconsistency. The stretched nature of the 16 categories soon starts to emerge: the 'A-Z of Insults' is little more than an alphabetised site index, whilst the promisingly-titled Sports, Expressions, and Readers Insults are major disappointments. Unfortunately, the Showbusiness category provides little recovery - the only plus-point being, strangely, a comprehensive Red Dwarf section listing insults from 32 episodes of the cult Sci-Fi/Comedy series. Fans will rejoice; others just won't understand. I was halfway inbetween, confusingly. There's more disappointment - coinciding with the site's bizarre attempt to appear vaguely cultured with categories devoted to classical quotes from Aesop, Homer (not of the Simpson variety, duh), and the Ancient Greeks/Romans, along with the Miscellaneous section: again, bizarrely, devoted to the negatives of smoking - a practice carried out intelligently with quotes such as the following:

Tobacco surely was designed <
br>To poison, and destroy mankind
[Philip Freneau]

Poetic? Yeah. Good 'n all, but does it belong on an insults site? I'm not so sure. Similar question marks lie over the inclusion of the Shakespeare category; a comprehensive listing of insults derived from some of his most famous works ("A plague of both your houses.."). You get the picture. Exciting stuff indeed. The category 'Political Insults' doesn't fare much better, even with an elongated section on the horrors of one Margaret Thatcher lying alongside other British and American political figures and leaders, from Churchill to Reagan, from Disraeli to Jefferson. Boooriing.

More predictable content however lies within the 'Especially For Kids', 'Everyday', and 'Insulting Humour' categories. Here, things take a distinct downwards turn, with content becoming increasingly puerile and adolescent. Ranging from the admittedly-obnoxious "I like you. People say I've got no taste, but I like you" through to bad taste, through to cheek, and back again, the lines and put-downs within these categories are probably what you'd expect from a site such as this, not flowing Shakespearean soliloquies. But its back to culture in a big way with the massive 'Graves and Epitaphs' section, all four pages of it. You probably know what to expect here - some of the more, er, alternative gravestone messages. Some remain cultured, some degenerate yet further into familiar bad taste fields, but there's nothing outrageous on display.

And then, to the main event - and the much talked about 'Yo Momma' section of the site. Detailing insults from the typical "Yo Momma's so big/fat/ugly/stupid/etc." category, there's more than enough to keep you amused. Some of the better...


• "Yo momma's so old, her social security number is 1."

• "Yo momma's so old,
she has an autographed bible."

• "Yo momma's so old, she knew Burger King while he was still a prince."

• "Yo momma's so big, that they had to change "One size fits all" to "One size fits most"."

Though if they're some of the better on display, I'm not sure how good the site actually is. And I'm still not. I'm undecided. Some of it is genius, this much is true, but most is juvenile humour - unintelligent, unsophisticated, and obvious. And there's nothing less funny than obvious humour. Insults.net has a lot of it. Visit. Look. Read. And make your own minds up, because I'm still not sure. Don't be offended though, 'k? Please?

Summary: