Maddox Sucks.

I’m not exactly sure when I came to the conclusion that Maddox–the sole writer for the wrongly-titled Best Page in the Universe—sucks. Maybe it was when he deleted his parody of Something Awful from his website. Or maybe it was when he released his literary abortion known as The Alphabet of Manliness. Perhaps it was whenever his fanboys started writing knockoffs so bad they almost made The Alphabet of Manliness seem palatable by comparison. Or maybe it was when he wrote this. Or maybe it was whenever he diluted the title of “Real Man” by applying it to his own pale, fat chauvinistic nerd ass.

All of the above reasons–plus a plethora of others I’ll get to in this review–are perfectly acceptable reasons to hate Maddox. Yes, hate. In the same way that Maddox “hates” old people, children, women, the Microsoft X-Box, the iPhone, and cheese pizza, I despise Maddox for being Maddox. To put it another way, I dislike the kind of guy who names his website “The Best Page In the Universe” and then uses it to mock people who somebody might actually give two shits about. Punctuating this L. Ron Hubbard-styled exercise in egotism is his brown-nosing fanbase which worships his work to the point of religious obsession. Could The Best Page in the Universe be the next Scientology, with Douglass DC-8-styled battlecruisers and intergalactic feminist aliens? Is that not the most terrifying possibility ever put onto the Internet? Let us not even entertain the thought of either and just move on.

Probably the easiest reason to hate Maddox is because he’s a terrible writer. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. “HURR HURR, TALK ABOUT A HYPOCRITE. SHITTY WRITER MAKING FUN OF ANOTHER WRITER’S SHITTY WRITING. LOLS!” Whatever you say, Captain Dumbass. Regardless of my writing talents, my site is tiny and inconsequential. Nobody cares what I think about anything. The likelihood of anybody–let alone several hundred thousand fans–actually reading this post and caring about what it says are slim to nil. The reason Maddox’s shitty writing is so obnoxious is because he is actually a professional because of it. People actually give a shit about what Maddox thinks about something. Somehow, in spite of being a parody (one hopes) of every single stupid manly cliché ever made by anybody, ever, this man was able to get a book deal. And he got it based on–get this–his writing work on a fucking blog. Which puts him on the same publicity-hunting rung as Tila Tequila. Minus the tits and ass, of course.

Now, fair’s fair, some of Maddox’s later blog posts (were) actually decent. He criticized Bill O’Reilly–and was funny doing it! He coherently lampooned various crappy cars. He successfully made a tribute to some actual manly men without seeming like a chauvinistic douche about it–particularly the bits about Gregory Peck and Judge Mathis. Well, except for the part where he describes Peck driving with “a woman in the passenger seat, just like God intended”, but since this is Maddox we’re talking about, and he and chauvinism go together like shit and toilet water, I’ll let it slide. He even satirized Sesame Street’s decision to make a muppet with AIDS–and didn’t even make AIDS jokes while he was doing it, which puts him above many other bloggers and so-called “humorists” one could name.

Those were the good times for Maddox–a period of time stretching all the way from 2002 to, oh, around the end of 2003. So, about a year of half-decent humor and satire. But what if you look deeper, back to where he was starting, around, say, 1998? Boy, are you in for a surprise!

It’s not that I’m against a guy venting about those nasty high school jocks that stripped him naked and strung him up a flagpole or those girls that refused to touch his penis or whatever the hell people did to Maddox when he was a pasty-skinned nerdy loser, but Christ if it isn’t the most irritating thing whenever “entertainment” writers start putting it on their front page. As a warning: No, nobody wants to hear that you think girls are Nazis. As a side note: Nobody gives a shit. Seriously, cut it out.

In later years, “just to be a dick”, Maddox started timing his posts once every few months instead of once a week. Just about everything Maddox has made during this period–which, unfortunately, includes the present–is unfathomably terrible. Some argue he bottomed out around where he started ranting over crappy movies nobody cares about.  Others say it happened when he criticised states nobody cares about. Probably his worst-ever blog post was his bit on puns, where he lashes out both at people who make puns (who nobody cares about) and Dave Matthews Band (a band nobody cares about). Clearly, two things can be inferred from these posts:

1. Nobody cares about the topics of the blog posts.
2. Nobody cares about the blog posts themselves, either.

Nobody cares because all of this is stupid bullshit.

That’s enough of talking about Maddox’s blog (and yes, Maddox, your “webpage” is a blog), so let’s go on to his “professional career.” There are two principal parts to Maddox’s career as a professional writer: Namely, a comic book about beating up women and children which is so bad it probably makes Shredded Moose look like Penny Arcade in comparison; and The Alphabet of Manliness, which I’ve read and therefore can confirm is so bad it makes Shredded Moose look like Penny Arcade in comparison.

The Alphabet of Manliness is possibly the longest, most knuckle-draggingly stupid treatise on everything that is wrong with men that has ever been published. Its twenty six chapters are arranged alphabetically, as follows:

1. A is for Ass-Kicking
2. B is for Boners
3. C is for Copping a Feel
4. D is for Taking a Dump (Seriously, does Maddox know how to spell? Since when does T equal a D… You know what? Nevermind)
5. E is for Enlightenment
6. F is for Female Wrestling

Seriously, good God.

In case you’re wondering, yes, it gets worse from there. There’s the chapter on “Knockers”, another chapter on “Chuck Norris”, another in which he teaches his fans how to obedience train their women, under “O”, and the obligatory pieces on urinal etiquette and violence. This book–which runs 204 pages long–includes such memorable passages as

(under Copping a Feel)

Figure 2: A droopy, pudgy, lumpy mess of an ass. Notice the pockmarks (1), awkwardly shaped slabs of meat jettisoning out from the sides of the waist (2), the clenched uninviting crack (3) and the burgeoning folds of cellulite (4). Just nasty.

Figure 3: A thick ass looks like a happy smile. You can see that this ass is healthy and bursting with flavor.

A fat ass is a sad ass. You don’t want anything to do with a fat ass, other than to loathe it. A thick ass, on the other hand, is plump and beautiful; it should make you feel hungry like when you see a glazed ham that you can’t afford in a Christmas catalogue. (Alphabet of Manliness, page 23)

And no, I’m not including the nasty pictures.

(under Chuck Norris)

I walked up the staircase for what seemed like days, and when I finally reached the top, I saw Chuck Norris sitting on his throne. I dared not look him in his eyes because one time this guy looked him in his eyes and Chuck Norris spontaneously combusted him. No one is allowed to speak with Chuck; the only thing you are allowed to do in his presence is bow, kiss his ring, bow again, and leave. So I walked up to his throne and saw that he was wearing a ring made out of solid diamonds with a unicorn on it that had an erection [Figure 3; the caption reads “I’d have a boner too if I were on Chuck Norris’ ring.” Boy, do I feel sorry for the talented artists who had to draw the picture of a ring embossed with a bucking unicorn and what appears to be a two-foot erection. But, oh, wait, these artists asked to be a part of the project. Nevermind then, into the pit with you all. THIS IS SPARTAAAAA]

I kissed his ring, and then I wanted to thank him, so I said, “Sir, permission to thank you for the privilege of allowing me to kiss your ring.” If Chuck Norris doesn’t immediately kill you, that means he has granted you permission. I thanked him, bowed and left. It was the happiest day of my life. (The Alphabet of Manliness, page 117)

Why the hell did Maddox even decide to include this? Seriously, he’d get a boner from being on Chuck Norris’ ring? He’s willing to kiss an engraving of a unicorn with an erection? He thinks Chuck Norris wears a ring with an engraving of a unicorn with an erection? Is he some kind of gay zoophile or something? Oh wait, it’s a joke, and he says “I’m currently not single” on his FAQ page on his blog anyway. Okay. Male or female partner, Maddox? I seriously can’t tell anymore.

Oh yes, and then there was the chapter on “Metal”, which I will use as an excuse to put this music video here. Hey, screw you if you don’t like it, I do this for every post.

(Iron Maiden, “Number of the Beast”; posted by Nitro285, assuming he doesn’t force me to take it down because he’s a Maddox fan)

The most obnoxious thing about Maddox’s fanbase is how they use the term “satire” to defend his articles. Whenever Maddox’s fans are called upon by somebody with some modicum of decency to argue why it’s all right that Maddox writes multi-page essays on beating women or abusing children, and they refer to his work as “satire”, they are arguing that his arguments are just joking around. To put it another way, they’re saying it’s OK to talk about beating women as long as you’re just joking. Or, I guess, that it’s OK as long as you’re just mocking women, somehow.

If you’re going to write “playful” satirical essays on beating the shit out of a woman (LOL, playful?), don’t make an early statement about how feminists are Nazis and whining about how girls don’t like you and all women are sluts. Seriously, just no. And, as a corollary, don’t feed me shit about how your article on child abuse is a joke whenever you write early about how children are worthless without so much as cracking a smile.

I don’t know how else to explain to you why this (by which I mean Maddox’s anti-feminism shit) is not satire. I guess I can try the simplest reasoning I can think of: The reason it’s not satire is because the person who wrote it seriously believed what he was writing. Let me put it this way: Satire means that a person is making fun of somebody else, mocking them to make a point about their arrogance or stupidity. It’s not like Maddox is making fun of chauvinist pricks when he says feminists are Nazis. It’s not like he was just pretending to have a grudge against women when he wrote early on “To all those guys out there looking for a good woman… STOP LOOKING.” No, it’s quite clear this pathetic bullshit is not a joke. Maddox is making his opinions heard with the striking of a hammer, pounding them into your skull, with all the humor and intelligence of Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. Which means that unless Maddox had an unusually enlightening conversation with the Tolerance Fairy and everything after that, including the obedience-training women chapter of the Alphabet of Manliness, is just Maddox making a commentary on how incredibly stupid and barbaric the American male is, he’s just being a chauvinist pig.

(Update Nov. 30, 2008:) I have heard increasingly angry commentary about this point, from many, many people who still argue that Maddox can be defended by simply saying he’s a satirist. To these people, Maddox is not just a “humorist” or a “humorous writer” or even a “shock writer”, they insist on the pretensions involved in calling a writer a satirist. Many have used the term “fratire” to describe Maddox’s style of writing. Which I suppose is honest, since “fratire” basically means “frat-boy satire” and Maddox is basically a frat boy without a fraternity. I will argue simply this: Satire is the art of ridicule. More specifically, it implies a folly or vice upon which scorn must be heaped. I wrote this article thinking that no sane human being, not even Maddox, could ever seriously believe that the women’s civil rights movement was a folly, and therefore I believed his fans merely to be wrong, not defending hatred and segregation of the sexes. I also felt that it was clear that Maddox could not be heaping scorn on anti-feminists and chauvinists, since Maddox has made it quite clear that he is against feminism in general. I suppose if Maddox regards the continued women’s rights movements as a “vice” or a “folly” seriously believes his commentary in Salon magazine that women’s subjugation in American society amounts to “not being able to vote”, and believes that womens’ rights are indeed much less important than rights for blacks or any other oppressed group, then I will relent and admit with shame and revulsion that Maddox’s work does indeed count as satire. The absolute most repulsive satire I have ever seen.

This post is at least five pages long and I still haven’t even begun to list all the reasons that Maddox is possibly the worst popular writer in the history of the Internet: The long list of obnoxious meme-like “manly” traits like his obsession with beef jerky and hot sauce; the inability to list a “like” that does not include lesbians, violence or antisocial behavior (because apparently his target audience is–you guessed it–35-year-old sexually insecure basement dwellers or thirteen-year-boys); suggesting that people kill themselves and then attacking anybody who says differently; and much, much more. Ha ha ha, Maddox, that suicide piece is hilarious. And your rebuttal to your detractors is just icing on the cake of brilliance.

In the end, you could almost forgive Maddox for being so awful if he were just venting. But when the guy’s so fuckin’ insecure of his self-worth he literally mentions in his bottom-of-the-page stat counter that he won’t be eligible for the Presidency until 2016 (“Vote for me then, guys, I’ll take away female suffrage and legalize rape”), says that his fans would make him President if they could, and you know they would just like he says, it becomes unforgivable. It’s like looking at Hitler before he became Chancellor of Germany, and yes I invoked Godwin’s Law. Because you know that’s how Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Because you just know that it was sycophantic morons like this guy that contributed to Hitler’s ability to enslave all of Western Europe. Thank God Maddox’s legions of fans will never leave their computers, because otherwise I’d be terrified of their collective strength. Head for the hills! Maddox’s fans are coming! They’re going to go after the women and children like 4chan’s Scientology raid, only a billion times stronger and infinitely more stupid.

Just to finish this off: One of Maddox’s posts is entitled “Wireless Internet may well destroy our chances of contacting intelligent life.” In it, he describes how one of his fans is a complete retard and goes off on the rest of his fans using her as an example. The apparent gist of it all is that these people are making aliens think we’re all a bunch of semi-intelligent Neanderthals that aren’t worth contacting. Just so you know Maddox, it’s not your fans. Oh no. They’re the least of our problems. Our bigger problem is with the half-cocked, insecure dumbshit leading them into new levels of stupidity by driving asshatted unfunny chauvinistic crap into their thick skulls, calling it “humor” on the way down the Golden Road To Retard Center. Seriously, Maddox, go fuck yourself, or get your man-crush Chuck Norris to do it for you. You’re such a pathetic excuse for a “manly man” it would be a miracle if he even let you suck his cock. And even though I said I’d let it slide, seriously Maddox, if you think “a woman in the passenger seat, just like God intended” is the pinnacle of masculinity, you’d might as well trade in your penis and get a vagina. It wouldn’t be missed, trust me.

UPDATE (July 31, 2008): I have found images which, in my opinion, prove that Maddox is a homosexual and likes the cock. These images were found here and were uploaded to MaddoxMania’s “Hidden Maddox” archive.