Pirate Extraodinaire

Boldly boasting "The Best Page In The Universe", Maddox of maddox.xmission.com represents a new generation of cultural satire that has created a controversial phenomenon worldwide. Taking inspiration from random current events, Maddox has created a blogging forum that sports attitude, sarcasm, and condescending retort that becomes addicting after just one visit to his site. The hilarious yet somewhat deluded entries have brought hours of personal entertainment that keep me checking back often to read the next saga of strange dimension.

Using a limited color scheme and simple hyperlinks, Maddox has provided a plain and easy to use page minus any frills or any conventional format that comes complete with tabs and spaces filled with nonessential information. I think it is refreshing to have a site that can be easily navigated and not polluted with unnecessary graphics that take too long to load.

There is a certain ingenious to Maddox, evident by the "hate mail" link and hit statistics (proudly posted on the front page), that gives himself further reason to boast his piratical ego. Maddox's rantings provide an almost convivial relationship between his readers and himself. While it is generally assumed that the website is for the readers, I think that Maddox gets more out it for himself then the thousands of people who visit the site on a daily basis. The focus seems more on catalyzing controversy then actually contributing worthwhile information. It has to be humorous for Maddox when people take the time to dispute his opinions while making themselves look like the idiots. There have been several entries that have been so radical that maddox.xmission.com has been banned in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, let alone several servers that refuse access on work computers. When the bans were first implemented, there was a surge of hits to his site, proving how much influence Maddox has.

Maddox's website has been so successful that he recently published a book (The Alphabet of Manliness) that follows the same genre of his website, series of short essays that promote his fantastically funny rhetoric. There is something refreshing about reading things that are unapologetic radical and things that you have thought yourself without having the guts to say it yourself.

With the expansion of the Internet, it seems that traditional print is becoming more unconventional. Having such an open forum as the Internet has allowed for people like Maddox to spread their own personal propaganda despite having no other qualifications other than thinking they are right. Thank goodness, or I would be one source less of entertainment.