Celebrating 3 years of useless pages with this article written by Kurt Vonnegut on December 7, 1997

Still useless after all these years

It’s hard to believe, but The Useless Pages are now three years old! Started in early December 1994 (it’s hard to tell exactly since this site is older than Deja News ), that means that this site has been around before such other sites that are on everyone’s bookmarks such as Alta Vista or Suck. Even more remarkable, not only were we on the web before, but also stuck around long after such sites as The Spot, Mirsky’s Worst of the Web (RIP), and a number of the much-hyped “S-Magazines” (which I’m not going to link to because most of them are now 404).

There have been a number of high points in the gig – my personal favorite still is the plug in Dave Barry in Cyberspace. Also directly because of this I’ve been quoted in newspapers (not just tabloids like The New York Times, but real papers like the The Houston Chronicle – thanks, Dwight!), magazines (most recently The New Yorker, which I’m also not going to link to since they’re the last magazine in America without a web site. I think they reached us via gopher), and radio. I haven’t been on TV yet (I’m waiting, Letterman. Or Conan) as a DIRECT result of The Useless Pages, but I HAVE been as a result of my job (which The Useless Pages played a big part in me getting).

So the question that still remains unanswered is WHY?!? That’s the question I am asked by far the most, and I still haven’t been able to satisfactorily answer it. Why people create these pages is easy – everyone thinks they’re the center of the universe and thinks everyone else is dying to know their every interest. But why do people LOOK at these sites? I do because I get paid to. Why do other people? Well, if there was a good reason, these pages wouldn’t be that useless, would they?

What does the future hold? Probably more of the same. I’ll try and do more Microsoft bashing, as much AOL bashing as I can, and, of course, lots and lots of Geocities bashing. And I’ll still refuse to look at personal home pages.

Now, if you’ll join me in song –

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear Useless Pages,
Happy Birthday to you!

– Kurt Vonnegut, December 7, 1997