America’s Funniest Home Hypermedia

So glad to have found this. A very nice addition to all info gathered so far about The Useless Pages. Managed to recover it from a Hungarian archive, some sort of a magazine I think.

This is the text from the 1995 version of Http://www.primus.com/staff/paulp/useless.html, the first home of the useless pages. It was first called America’s Funniest Home Hypermedia and changed after to the Useless Pages. If you just got here you can read it all on A Brief History of Uselessness on the web

 Useless WWW Pages

“America’s Funniest Home Hypermedia”

(Http://www.primus.com/staff/paulp/useless.html)

Paul’s quotes o ‘the day:

“There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.”

– Bertrand Russell

Useless Interactivity

The wise people at IRsociety have seen fit to create a chat room devoted to the Useless Pages. Far be it for me to question its usefulness! If you have not tried this web chat before, now may be the time. Since you’re here, you obviously do not have anything worthwhile to do.

Executive Producer: Paul Phillips. Director: Steve Berlin. (Brought to you by the letter ‘Q’ and the number Pi!)

Disclaimer

“Useless” in this context does not mean poorly done or of no value at all, it just means that there is no point in making these things available on the web. If you see a page and think “Good God, WHO CARES?” you have found a likely submission. If you see your own pages here, do not come after me with a pickaxe, I did not choose them all personally. (I’ve been amazed at the number of people who submit their own pages for inclusion.) Further, some of these pages are deliberately useless: that is, they poke fun at their own subject matter. Some are not. If you can tell which is what, you’re one up on me.

Useless Site of the Week

Cool Site of the Day Hotline What a great idea! Instead of going through the bother of clicking on one of the zillion or so “Cool Site of the Day” pages, you can now call a 900 number, pay someone five bucks to read you a URL, then write it down and type it in by hand!

Useless Home Page of the Week

Kevin’s Home Page Featuring sounds of rude body noises, probably caused by eating what’s in his fridge (which he also lists here).

Last modified: 08/07/95 [email protected]

The second version I found is from 12/03/95, 4 months later. This one I found on a Czech website ,muzeuminternetu, it packs much more content and it appears they encountered and recovered from an incident. Read on for more details. Was also able to find a logo, not all of it but I think it looks good anyway.

logo from the useless pages reading USELESS

“America’s Funniest Home Hypermedia”

We are BACK ON THE AIR! (more or less)

We are still reviving after horrible things happened involving the server, a chainsaw, and Courtney Love. Things will be slowly added over the next week or so, but here’s some new stuff to keep you Useless Fans busy for awhile – Steve

Go straight to the Latest Useless Stuff

Paul’s quotes:

  • “There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.”
    — Bertrand Russell
  • “The things you think are useless, I can’t understand.”
    — Steely Dan

Executive Producer: Paul Phillips. Director: Steve Berlin. (Brought to you by the letter ‘Q’ and the number Pi!)

The discovery that someone had typed in his entire 30K CD collection for WWW consumption prompted me to generate the useless pages page. I have since found that this 30K list is a pale imitation of far more useless efforts — see below. Since you’re wasting your time even now, the useless pages page is first on the list of useless pages.

I don’t mean to preclude those outside the Americas from being considered useless. Actually, they’re quite well represented. I just thought the subtitle was amusing.

I summoned the all powerful deity known as “Perl” to aid me in tracking changes to the Useless Pages. Witness the Useless Updates page and save yourself some time, which you can then waste on more useless pages.

Painstakingly alphabetized structure!

1,000,000
Check it out — we have reached one million hits.
Accolades
We’ve garnered an award or two! Of course the real work is done by those people typing in CD lists and attaching hot tubs to the Web, but I’ll take all the credit.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to everyone that has contributed so far! I guess I’m not taking all the credit after all.
Blink
In a fit of creativity, I have built my own monument to Uselessness. Do you use Netscape like 62% of the web browsing population? If so, come try to decipher my secret message regarding blink. If not, don’t bother. Really.
Contest!
Useless Contest III!
Disclaimer
“Useless” in this context doesn’t mean poorly done or of no value at all, it just means that there isn’t any point in making these things available on the web. If you see a page and think “Good God, WHO CARES?” you have found a likely submission. If you see your own pages here, don’t come after me with a pickaxe, I didn’t choose all these personally. (I have been amazed at the number of people that submit their own pages for inclusion. Research into that phenomenon is left for a future project.) Furthermore, some of these pages are intentionally useless: that is, they poke fun at their own subject matter. Some aren’t. If you can tell which is which, you’re one up on me.
Hall of Fame!
Now available for your perusal: The Useless Hall of Fame. Do not overlook the other worthy pages in your rush to see who has attained this lofty position!
Interactivity Uselessness
The wise people at IRsociety have seen fit to create a chat room devoted to the Useless Pages. Far be it for me to question its usefulness! If you haven’t tried this web chat thing before, now may be the time. Since you’re here, you obviously don’t have anything worthwhile to do.
Here is a transcript of a chat session they hosted, with Steve doing the yacking.
International Appeal
I have this thing about seeing the pages written about in other languages, so I have devoted space for this questionable collection of quotes from around the world.
Job security
At my fantastic boss’s behest now that the Useless pages are getting over 70,000 hits per week, please visit Primus and consider hiring us for your Internet and WWW needs. Heck, if I can grind our server to a halt with pages built in my spare time, just think what I can do when I really try! I used to say “useless boss” rather than fantastic, but I decided I like getting paid.
One Book
As long as I’m subjecting our server to all this traffic, let me drop in a plug for the non-useless One Book list, and solicit your submission. Spend some time today doing something useful!
Other Sources of Uselessness
If you’ve enjoyed this page, you’ll also enjoy A list of sites that have grown too big to list here so they get their own sub-page.
Retirement
NEW format! After pages have duly served their time, they are farmed out to the land of retired Useless pages. Visit them, lest they wither and die from lack of love.
Statistics
Wondering how much traffic these pages get? Wonder no more.
Submissions
Want to submit a useless page for inclusion? Please read my notes on submissions first.
The Useful Pages!
We at Primus do useful work too. You should come and see it. Samplings:

  • TravelSource
  • Anini
  • NetVision

And now that your appetite has been whetted, the main course:

 

  • Useless Pages and friends:
    • Notes on Useless Submissions Please read!
    • The Uselessness of Cars
    • The Uselessness of Computers
    • Useless Contest III
    • An Extremely Useless Fantasy
    • The Uselessness of Food and Drink
    • The Uselessness of Fortune Telling
    • A Useless Game New!
    • The Uselessness of Guestbooks
    • The Uselessness of Homonymophone Debates
    • The Uselessness of Machines
    • The Uselessness of Music Collections
    • The Uselessness of Auto-refresh
    • The Uselessness of Pets
    • The Uselessness of Pi and Friends
    • The Uselessness of WackosAlmost all of these sub-pages have been newly updated, so check the Useless Updates (Now with doctor-tested PERL, for whiter, brighter web pages!) to see what’s new.

    Useless Site of the Week:
    Computer Workplace Oooh, now HERE are people I would trust to do computer work for ME! Useless Home Page of the Week:
    Maya’s Home Page She’s been featured here so many times that I figured I would save myself the time and just link to her home page rather than the dozens of more times she’ll be here in the future.

    • The 1994 Baseball Season Simulation They’re wrong. I think the Cubs would have won the world series.
    • 8-Track Heaven Shouldn’t that be “8-Track Hell”?
    • The Angst Game A loser every time!
    • Another Barfbag Collection Pretty soon they’ll need their own sub-page…
    • Another Insulator Collection
    • The Belly Button Survey
    • The Burnout Page No, it’s NOT the David Bowie page.
    • Chew Magazine Yeah, I know, it’s useless on purpose – the domain name is a dead giveaway.
    • The Christopher Lambert Fan Club Why DIDN’T he get an Oscar for “Highlander II”?!
    • Classes Eve has taken Rigid Body Dynamics? RIGID BODY DYNAMICS?!?!
    • Computer Poetry Useless in itself, but bonus points for the very odd survey at the end.
    • David Lynch reviews soaps Not the director. Not as in soap operas. Although either of those would make the page even MORE useless!
    • Find the Pope in the Porsche
    • Find Your Sex If you need to ask, you probably can’t answer the key question!
    • Flammability of Household Products What the hell! Go ahead, kids, TRY it at home!
    • Florida Lottery Loser Lotteries, to quote someone else, are a tax on people who are bad at math.
    • Happy Whale and Tiny Whale I think this was one of Herman Melville’s earlier works
    • The History of Muzak What? No mention of Yanni?
    • The Home Page of the Web Gee, and I always thought it was at CERN.
    • How Not to Feed jcb I was going to put this on the food page, but then I realized, by the time you eliminate everything on the list, there’s no food left!
    • How to Use the World Wide Web Let’s see…I click on the Netscape icon then click on this link to teach me how to click on the Netscape icon and click on a link…
    • Inspired Words William S. Burroughs, eat your heart out!
    • Jeff’s Flat Tire Page
    • John Jacob Jingleheimer Shmitt That’s my name, too!
    • Kickass Poetry Page Sort of a “Byron Meets Die Hard”
    • The Lipstick Page I think they’re making these colors up!
    • List of 10 Things I agree with the author – you shouldn’t make “Top 10” lists unless you’re the host of a national talk show making an 8-figure income. However, the alternative he presents isn’t much better.
    • Maya’s Toiletries From the creator of the Butt Gallery – how does she DO it?
    • Messages Heavenbound Ground control to Major Tomb (I stole that joke from Dave Barry)
    • Mind Reader Is this what they mean by “fuzzy logic”?
    • Mike and Anthony’s Wired Room I wasn’t going to even add this to the list, but about a half dozen people nominated it in just one week (a record)! Equally useless is Hanszen Room 191.
    • One Question Purity Test I’m 99 44/100 % pure!
    • Nothing
    • Oxymorons Hey! They left off the most famous oxymoron of all – “Military Intelligence”!
    • The Page that Turns You into a Chicken Oh, if only it was a rooster, the rude puns I could make!
    • The Ralph Page And they don’t mean ‘To Vomit’…
    • Random Internet Access Provider Uh…but you need to have access to the Internet to see any of these pages…Oh, God, I’m so confused…
    • A Rhyme Generator Hey, I tried it, and they actually have a rhyme for “Orange!”
    • The Soundex Code Wow! I never knew there were any nerds at MIT!
    • Stuff Alf the Poet is Looking For Hey, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for! (That’s a Negativland reference)
    • Stupid Questions to Ask Pilots Is nice to know computer consultants don’t have a monopoly…
    • Suzuki Sam Oooh, I can’t WAIT for “Suzuki Sam vs. Joe Isuzu!”
    • The Velcro Page The most popular page on my favorite newsgroup, alt.sex.fetish.velcro
    • Virtual Jack-o-lantern In VRML! It’s odd… No matter what options you pick, it looks vaguely like Mark Pesce…
    • Virtual Penis Rating Really, this would have made it even if it didn’t contain the word “penis”.
    • What’s in Jeremy’s Wallet I can hardly wait to see what he does with his glove compartment.
    • The Winkie Gallery Mommy, they scare me…
    • The World Famous Red Page Pretty soon, every page will be required by law to have a warning like this one.
    • Write to a Random Member of Congress. Have them play the Useless Game.
    • Xkeycount Top List Place your bets!

    Everything that was here before is now in the Home for Retired Useless Pages – over 450 links to the utterly useless! Please visit them, they get so lonely. Now with Retired Food pages!

    People have commented to me about the Useless pages. Their thoughts are brilliant and you must view them.

    Last modified: 12/03/95
    [email protected]

Had to remove the links because, believe it or not, after 20 some years, they were all expired/used by someone else with no connection to what it was mentioned in the useless pages. Will continue to look for more