The Best Page In The Universe - Television Tropes & Idioms

"This page is about me and why everything I like is great. If you disagree with anything you find on this page, you are wrong."

- Introductory paragraph to the Web site

This page is about Maddox and why the tropes he uses on his website are great. If you disagree with anything you find on this page, you are wrong.

The Best Page in the Universe

is a personal satirical humor Web site created by George Ouzounian, better known by his pen name Maddox. Launched in 1997 without any high expectations, the Web site became known by word of mouth.

"The Best Page in the Universe" originated from a text document that Maddox wrote in 1996 aptly named "fifty things that piss me off!" He gave the list to several people on EFnet's #coders and a few coworkers, and the positive response led him to create the website.

Maddox decided to name his site "The Best Page in the Universe" despite his knowledge that Yahoo! blocked sites with the phrase "the best" in the title from inclusion in its search engine.

On July 15, 2009, Xmission.com, which hosts The Best Page in the Universe, had an Alexa rank of about 16,000, and TheBestPageInTheUniverse.net, which works as an alternative domain for Maddox's Web site, had an Alexa rank of about 33,000.

Website's layout is minimalistic primarily to reduce bandwidth costs — useful, as the site contains no advertisements other than for itself and for Maddox's books. Maddox also states that the minimalism protests the many Web sites containing "fancy HTML" but lacking substantial content.

The page is headed with an image of Maddox's face superimposed over a bust of Che Guevara. In the image, Maddox is wearing a beret emblazoned with the Jolly Roger, and an eye patch. Maddox uses this image as a parody of the revolutionary icon. Maddox says that Che Guevara is remembered as "Che the revolutionary", not "Che the pinko", and claims to be neither socialist nor communist. Instead, he often proclaims himself to be a pirate, and typically portrays himself as such in his articles and artwork.

Maddox has compared reading black text on a white background to "staring at a light bulb". The site uses large, light-colored text against a black background to, in his stated opinion, reduce strain on the eyes.

Many of Maddox's articles include MS Paint illustrations, with touchup done in Adobe Photoshop. Images include elderly people being fired to the sun, hippies being killed, and Maddox's testicles drawn larger than basketballs. Maddox maintains a section in which he criticizes hate mail his website has generated. When posting his replies, he breaks the e-mail down, ridicules points which use fallacious logic and corrects linguistic errors. He also runs an online store which sells merchandise such as stickers and apparel that bear phrases used in his articles. The site contains several "hidden pages", many of which are unfinished works or first drafts of articles that were moved around.

Now has a nifty show on Youtube.

Maddox appeared in an eighth season episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! about old people and the stereotypes about them. Maddox thought that old people sucked.

He also has written the Alphabet Of Manliness. You will grow more pairs after reading it.

This site provides examples of:

Accentuate the Negative: He shows no mercy in his evaluation of children's works, culminating in a book.
Alternate Character Interpretation: invoked He believed that Christopher Reeve was a "self-serving asshole" who only opened a paralysis foundation because he himself needed treatment - the fact that he would be helping millions of other paralysis victims was an unintended side-effect.
Banned In China: The site is banned in Saudi Arabia and Dubai. And he's proud of it. (Turns out he was banned for a technicality, not content, but he thinks it still counts.)
Batman Gambit: He managed to do this against a hate-mailer. Instead of ripping apart the hate mail as he usually does, instead he told the mailer how he used to be abused and that his writing was a way to express himself. The mailer wrote back in sympathy, only to have Maddox responded back: "Just kidding. Tool."
Boring, but Practical: His reasoning for his website's Minimalism,
Child Hater - As best demonstrated with his "I Am Better Than Your Kids" site.
Disproportionate Retribution: He once got an e-mail talking about how dull his site was. He responded by banning the person's entire ISP... with a message explaining that the banned individuals should send this dude an e-mail of gratitude.
Dead Baby Comedy: For example, in his article The iPhone is a Piece of Shit and so is Your Face he wrote, "When the iPhone was first announced, CEO Steve Jobs spewed enough BS to cover a football field full of babies 3 feet deep in bullshit, which sounds cool because he could have potentially murdered a football field full of babies, but he passed on this opportunity by introducing the phone instead."
Dummied Out: Looking at the HTML source of many of his pages reveals many bits omitted through <!— HTML comments. —>
Emphasize Everything: He attacked the prevalent misuse of the terms "epic" and "fail", saying that their overuse by popular culture has stripped them of their meaning. People sick of it themselves hailed it as a welcome return from a months-long hiatus and a Moment of Awesome .
Even the Guys Want Him: He has received at least 80 marriage proposals, 4 of them are from men.
Everybody Hates Mathematics: A particular Berserk Button for him. He dedicates an article tearing apart the "when will I ever use math again in life?" excuse, mentioning that math is the reason why technological advancements such as oil platforms, medicine, and space travel even exist, and that people that use the excuse are lazy, self-important morons.
Everyone Hates Mimes: Maddox hates mimes so much that he even dreams of them getting skewered by a rain of swords.
Excuse Plot: the (non-existing) Best Game in the Universe has one as evidenced in the prologue:
[...] Satisfied from his healthy breakfast of rocks and shitting gun powder, [Maddox] headbutts the front door into splinters and proceed to do his daily business:
KICKING ASSES
That's it. That's pretty much the premise of the whole game.
Follow the Leader: The site had lot of imitators. Most of them fall afoul of Sturgeon's Law.
Gag Testicles: A lot larger than the sun! Which he actually used in his rant against the original Xbox, where he referred to the enormous controller as "almost as big as my nuts".
Grammar Nazi: One of the ways that Maddox took apart a hate mail is by pointing out its numerous grammatical errors. He's had to deal with a few thinking that the words "inane" and "homage" are not actual words.
Government Conspiracy: Spoofed on the "Unfastened Coins" sub-webpage, where Maddox "proves" that the Titanic didn't sink because of an iceberg collision, but because of a government cover-up. He also mocked it with "There is no 9/11 conspiracy you morons", completely savaging Loose Change.
Hates Small Talk: Maddox wishes he could kick people who make small talk in the crotch. Seriously.
He-Man Woman Hater
Hypocritical Humor: One of the above-mentioned uninformed grammar Nazis who thought "homage" wasn't a real word went on to tell Maddox that he "didn't think you'd want some collage-educated guy bitchin at you."
- The FAQ notes that Maddox dates pages by when they were last updated rather than posted, and that if a page actually is updated it will be moved back to the top of the front page, but he then says "this rarely happens because I do everything perfekt the frst time."
I'll Never Tell You What I'm Telling You: "You know ACE, I won't even point out the irony of your subject line (it's "you're", not "your", dipshit)"
Insane Troll Logic: Possibly spoofed: "Mimes are worthless. Environmentalists are worthless. Therefore Mimes are Environmentalists."
Logical Fallacies: One of the staples of Maddox's satire.
- One particularly hilarious example is a cartoon satirizing astrology in which someone unscrews the cap from a soda bottle and reads on it the words "SORRY PLEASE TRY AGAIN", and then furiously shouts at the heavens, "DAMN YOU NEPTUNE!"
- He also pointed out the idiocy of people who are opposed to the hiring of immigrant labor AND opposed to laws that would force companies to pay these immigrants fair wages. If they had to pay them fair wages, there would be no incentive for these companies to hire immigrant workers over local Americans (who are already protected by minimum wage laws). Apparently he even called in to a local radio show about this one, but the host was unable to follow his basic argument.
Minimalism: The sites pages consist of minimal colour (large grey text on a black background), and is mostly text oriented, for the most part lacking images, advertisments, animations, and other fancy design gimmicks. The site author, Maddox, claims the purpose of this is in part to minimise bandwidth consumption, but is mostly as protest against "all the slick-looking, contentless web sites out there" and to make the website easier on the eyes as "Staring at a white background while you read is like staring at a light bulb".
Mean Character, Nice Actor: Maddox is soft-spoken and level-headed in interviews. His voice in his videos is also much softer than one would expect from reading the website.
One of Us: He plays a lot of video games, and has done positive reviews for Contra III and Ikaruga.
Rated M for Manly
- Testosterone Poisoning
Salt and Pepper: Complained about here.
Schedule Slip: Over the years Maddox has updated the site less and less, and at points gets an update about 1-2 times per year. However, it's getting better after the release of his second book.
- "Now that my book is finished, I can get back to regularly not updating my website."
Self-Deprecation: "These corporate sites have promotions, games, and discounts, yet more people come to this site every day and read stupid bullshit about how big my balls are."
Small Name, Big Ego: Parodied. "Some people think I'm conceited. Oh well... THE UNIVERSE REVOLVES AROUND ME. I AM KING. Everyone wishes they were me. EVERYONE. If I weren't me, I'd wish I was. I love me." Overlaps with Refuge in Audacity.
Refuge in Audacity: "If there was a building that stood for grammatical integrity..."
Refuge in Vulgarity
Take That: On almost everything. His Ikaruga review turned into a random stab at Tekken, mocking its character design (in particular, Armor King).
Trademark Favorite Food: Beef jerky. At one point he posted an entire article, the link to which said would offer a list of everything better than beef jerky. The article consisted of one single word: "nothing".
- His article on Tabasco sauce also used a similar joke - it included a list of things he would suggest one put Tabasco sauce on, which consisted of a single bullet point: "everything".
Viewers Are Geniuses: Maddox learned the dangers of this assumption the hard way, along with people insisting "inane" was not a real word.
Viewers Are Morons: He heavily believes this, specifically playing this viewpoint up in "I am a genius, you are not" and "Wireless internet may very well destroy our chances of contacting intelligent life", wherein he rips apart moronic mail. In fairness, his readers (or at the very least, the ones that send him hate-mail) literally go out of their way to prove him right.