Try to fathom what the following headlines have in common: 'Britney Spears encourages teen girls to dress like hookers', 'Marry me or I'll blow up the grenade', 'Misanthropic b**** calls for mass execution of teenage mothers'.
The answer is they all come from the quality news links site Fark.com, which draws on sources such as USA Today and proclaims to be cookie-free, Java-free and content-free.
Quick reference tags attached to featured articles include asinine and sappy.
To read an article, just click on the icon to the left of the entry then, as the home page advises, rinse. Repeat. Wipe hands on pants.
Despite or perhaps because of Fark's crudity and prurience, it habitually attracts a huge amount of traffic - about 350,000 hits a day. Thus, when a small site runs a story which appeals to the twisted minds of Fark readers, the onslaught of traffic will often overwhelm it.
The site is then duly proclaimed to be Farked, as in 'we've taken such a hammering that the server's melted - we're Farked'. This ranks as every Web master's worst nightmare. But the one thing that alarms Web masters even more than being Farked is being Slashdotted. The evil stepmother of the Fark phenomenon is slashdot.org - the alternative digital debate forum.