************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** There's nothing more painful than bad jokes. Of course, we all think we're funnier than the next guy. If you really think you can teach the humor challenged a thing or two, the net provides a number of interesting ways to shtick it all out. Last year, the Academy Awards page ran a joke contest, urging readers of its www.oscar.com page to write material for host Billy Crystal. Crystal used the winning entry on air. And it was actually kind of funny. Crystal was sure his new film "Price is a Genius and Waterhouse is Sexy" was a shoe in for an award. The Oscars page makes no mention of up coming contest for this year's awards, however. Given the success of last year's contest and the good press it generated, it's likely we'll see a repeat. The oldest, on-going forum for online yucks is the newsgroup rec.humour.funny. Don't confuse this newsgroup with the flame- and-spam-and-OJ-joke pit called rec.humour. The .funny variant is moderated. If your jokes ain't funny, they don't get posted by the moderator. There are many offbeat perks that come with a job in the software industry. Bare feet and **bringing** pets to work have been staples for decades. A recent addition is being able to surf the Dilbert web page (www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert) for a good half hour while you sip your late morning cappuccino (does the non-high tech crowd really start working before 10:30 am?). Dilbert creator Scott Adams makes a habit of randomly calling people on his mailing list. Not once has he ever caught someone in the middle of actual work. To help people in need of new and interesting ways to waste their employer's money, the Dilbert page has added what has become a popular time sink: The List of the Day. Users are invited to submit or vote on amusing entries. The list topic changes each working day. Topics include things like "Things you wish you had told your boss" or "Ways to get more vacation time." Participating in Dilbert list culture can be fun ... at first. The fun stops when you realize the most popular entries tend to be based on three reoccurring themes: 1) ha ha I slept with the boss's wife 2) ha ha the boss's daughter is a tramp 3) Windows 95 crashes a lot. The questionable maturity level is further evidence for a pet theory of mine: everything you need to know about success in the corporate world is learned in high school, not university. Allan Bloom be damned. If you have a very twisted sense of humor, The Dysfunctional Family Circus page at www.spinnwebe.com/dfc/ might be right up your silicon alley. Every few days a netizen known by the /nom de guerre/ "Spinwebe" uploads a Family Circus cartoon sans caption. Users are asked to submit their own captions. The Dysfunctional Family Circus page really tests copyright and fair-use laws, not to mention good taste. The gimmick is to re- interpret cartoonist Bil Keene's idealized portrayal of American family life. In a society where parents think it's a good idea leash their kids to the furniture and pop down to the pub or readily teach their kids racism (recently a friend of mine from the Caribbean was riding the Disney World monorail; when a child wanted to sit in the window seat next to her, the parents stated audibly "we don't sit with her kind"), users of the Dysfunctional Family Circus page see Keene's work as near propaganda, material ripe for some net-style "culture jamming."