This can generate such an enormous amount of traffic in such a short time that smaller websites thus linked are often rendered inoperable due to congestion or simple server failure.

[5] The squirrel image is no longer used in the production area of the site, but it can still be found as the server's 404 error for pages that do not exist.

[4] In 1999, eighteen months after registering the domain name, he launched Fark as a way to share interesting news postings with his friends rather than sending them numerous emails.

[12] Curtis launched Foobies.com in 2006 as a NSFW (not safe for work) offshoot of Fark, primarily because advertisers complained about links to female breasts on the main site.

The book critically explores the mass media industry and the go-to stories used when there is a lack of hard news to report.

Its right column displays technology content from USA Today with video clips and a headline widget of USAToday.com's Tech Live and Game Hunters stories.

[21] In January 2011, Fark was sued in Los Angeles Federal Court by Gooseberry Natural Resources, LLC, for allegedly violating US Patent No.

This patent, awarded in 2002, involves typing text into an administration system, storing it on a server, and publishing it on the Internet.

Other defendants sued in the case include Reddit, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Digg, Geeknet (owner of Slashdot), TechCrunch, Newsvine, and Yahoo.

[23] Curtis later described the entire ordeal as, "a nightmare", saying, "Imagine someone breaking into your home, then being forced to sit on the couch while their lawyers file motions over how much stuff they can take.

"[23] At the 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach, California, he referred to patent trolls as "terrorists", comparing them to the Abu Sayyaf terror group in the Philippines, which kidnapped people for ransom, collected small sums of money, expanded with more personnel and equipment, and then kidnapped more people for higher ransoms.

[28][29] Compared to other popular websites, such as Daily Kos and del.icio.us, Fark is a relatively small operation, run more or less singlehandedly by founder Drew Curtis from his home near Lexington, Kentucky.

[31] The rest of the money goes to the site's legal "war chest" as well as to pay other expenses such as hosting, website design, and forum moderation.

[31] Curtis has used public relations to drive traffic, including interviews every Friday on TechTV for one to one and a half years (c. 2002–2003) about the three weirdest tech-oriented stories of the week.

[31] Subscribers, known collectively as TotalFarkers or TFers, at one time had the privilege of seeing and commenting on all links submitted to the site, as opposed to only those approved for inclusion on the main page.

These are essentially in-jokes which either originated on Fark or on other sites (such as 4chan or Something Awful) that have become an integral part of the community culture and used in myriad discussions in the forums, regardless of whether they apply to the topic at hand.

[40] Several groups of people seem to take a bit more abuse than others on the site, including PETA, Catholic priests, the French, and Duke University, according to Curtis.

[41] The site has also become somewhat well known for including "NSFW" (Not Safe For Work) in the headlines of links that contain images or videos of a sensitive nature, and in 2007, attempted to file a trademark of the phrase.

[42] Fark was also involved in organizing the Rickrolling of the New York Mets in April 2008, when they encouraged readers to vote for Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up as the song to be played during every home game of the 2008 season.

[43] One particularly notable Farkism involves the acronym UFIA (Unsolicited Finger In Anus), which became a cliché after an article making the main page misquoted a judge using the line.

[46] Another popular Farkism involves KABC-TV Consumer Specialist Ric Romero, which began on October 19, 2005, when he wrote a news story on the "new" Internet phenomenon of blogging.

[48] Over the course of the next several years, he became somewhat of a meme on the site, as Farkers would post links to his stories, along with his photo, and a brief caption stating something obvious that everyone already knew.

[54] Greenlit links can generate upwards of 300,000 page views in one month for the recipient, which is such an enormous amount of traffic that smaller websites are often "farked", meaning that their servers have crashed.

However, during major events such as the September 11 attacks or the Hurricane Katrina aftermath, usage spikes and the site can actually be seen as a more serious outlet for news.

[54][60] In response to this coverage, Drew Curtis placed a green band on the letter "K" in the site's logo at the top of the page, to show support for Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

[61] In a June 2009 interview, Curtis said that almost all traffic coming from the People's Republic of China and India was from spammers, so he blocked both countries from the site.

Some of these celebrities include Alan Colmes of Fox News,[68] MythBusters co-host Adam Savage,[69] science fiction author John Scalzi,[70] and actor Wil Wheaton.