By Jeff Roberts
Superbad is one of those out-of-the-mainstream web sites which has
gained
all of its limited popularity through word-of-mouth (or word-of-e-mail,
or
even word-of-hyperlink) advertising. I first heard about it from a
friend
here at MIT, as is the case with much of the interesting stuff on
the
internet (the college community has turned out to be one of the most
effective advertising mechanisms for the web-not surprising that many
companies are looking to capitalize on it). I found it to be one of
the
most unique sites I've ever seen, yet, in a way, I also found it to
be like
every other site I've ever been to.
What it is technically is a collection of web pages, each having
some varied
combinations of clickable images, colorful and/or animated images
and
backgrounds, text, and any other features characteristic of web pages.
However, the pages tend to be visually confusing and illogically designed,
and, most of all, contain little to no useful information. Often there
is
text on a page which is impossible to read because it clashes with
the
background.
These pages are also very interactive. Just moving one's mouse over
different images causes various other things to happen. Sometimes
things
light up, sometimes things move. Then again, some pages are not interactive
at all. One just looks at them. The final piece of the system is that
clicking things on one page take one to another page which could be
completely unrelated to what was clicked on. Sometimes there are many
things to click on a page, and so there are many different places
the user
could go. Sometimes there are fewer things. Sometimes the user will
come
to a page with a listing of all the pages on the site, and can actually
choose where to go based on some information of what's there. When
someone
clicks, one can almost never tell what's going to happen next, but
more
interestingly, one never knows whether one can tell what's going to
happen
next or not. You may need to read that last sentence twice out loud.
The best way I can think to describe this site is as a web-based
baby's toy.
Think of a jack-in-the-box, or one of those plastic playthings where
a kid
pushes a button and some colorful cartoon character or animal or something
pops up. The basic idea is that a young child is entertained by this
perform-some-action-and-get-some-response type of play, and is even
more
pleased when the response involves colors, music, or other eye-catching
things. Superbad is very similar (though I haven't encountered any
music
yet). Some other things about the site also make it seem a bit baby-like.
The made-up word "superbad" sounds like something a child
with limited
vocabulary would use. There is also a page with a story about a monster
on
it, replete with non sequiturs and missing information, reminiscent
of the
work of a child still honing his or her writing skills.
From a philosophical point of view, Superbad does is separate the
content
from the context of the web. We are used to surfing the web for a
purpose,
usually related to information; maybe we want to read the online news,
or
check the box office numbers, or watch sports highlights on streaming
video.
Perhaps we want to look up a web page specifically about snorkeling.
Therefore, web sites are designed to be easy to find, easy to navigate
and
easy to read, such that the context of the sites themselves disappears
and
we see only the content. Superbad answers the question, "What
would surfing
the web be like if there was no information on it?" Here the
contextual
part of the web is made blatantly obvious. We can see what happens
when
background and text are put together inappropriately. When we point
at
something, something lights up to make us aware that we've done something.
It often doesn't give us any information about what we've done, it
just
makes us aware that we've done it. We know that when we click a hyperlinked
object, something will happen. We're used to having some idea of what
we're
going to get when we click on a particular link. But when the content
of
the web disappears, we realize that clicking on something could take
us
anywhere. It could take us somewhere we want to go, or it could mislead
us
and bring us somewhere completely uninteresting.
However, that's not to say that Superbad itself is uninteresting.
On the
contrary, it has a tendency to hook the user. Perhaps it's because
of the
"baby toy" idea described above-people are just easily entertained
by
pushing buttons and watching the ensuing reaction. Or perhaps people
are
just so hooked to the web that it doesn't matter any more what the
content
is, as long as there's pointing and clicking involved. Whatever the
case,
Superbad, being both unusual and familiar, says quite a bit about
what the
web is and tells us a little bit about who we are as its users.