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Screenshot  Screenshot on April 7, 2025 | |
Type of site | Blog |
|---|---|
| Owner | Happy Mutants |
| Founder(s) | Carla Sinclair,Mark Frauenfelder |
| Editor | Mark Frauenfelder,David Pescovitz,Rob Beschizza,Carla Sinclair |
| Key people | Jason Weisberger,Cory Doctorow (until January 2020),Xeni Jardin (until February 2021) |
| URL | boingboing |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Launched |
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Boing Boing is a website, first established as azine in 1988, later becoming agroup blog. Common topics and themes includetechnology,futurism,science fiction,gadgets,intellectual property,Disney, andleft-wing politics. It twice won theBloggies for Weblog of the Year, in 2004 and 2005. The editors areMark Frauenfelder,David Pescovitz,Carla Sinclair, andRob Beschizza,[1] and the publisher is Jason Weisberger.
One report namedBoing Boing as the most popular blog in the world until 2006, when Chinese-language blogs became popular;[2][3] it remained among the most widely linked and cited blogs into the 2010s.[4][5][6]
Boing Boing (originallybOING bOING) started as azine in 1988 by married duo Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair. Issues were subtitled"The World's Greatest Neurozine". Associate editors includedGareth Branwyn,Jon Lebkowsky,Paco Nathan, andDavid Pescovitz. Along withMondo 2000,Boing Boing was an influence in the development of thecyberpunksubculture. It reached a maximum circulation of 17,500 copies.[5] The last issue of the zine was #15.
Boing Boing was established as awebsite in 1995;[7] it became a web-only publication one year later.[5] While researching for an article about blogs in 1999, Frauenfelder became acquainted with theBlogger software. He relaunchedBoing Boing as aweblog on 21 January 2000, describing it as a "directory of wonderful things".[5] Over time, Frauenfelder was joined by four co-editors: Doctorow, Pescovitz, Jardin and Beschizza, all of whom previously contributed toWired magazine.Maggie Koerth-Baker, after a run as a guest blogger in 2009,[8] joined the site as its Science Editor, leaving to join a Nieman Foundation fellowship in 2014.
In September 2003,Boing Boing removed their Quicktopics user-comment feature without warning or explanation. Bloggers commenting on the change at the time speculated that it stemmed from "identity impersonators and idiot flamers" pretending to be co-editors.[9]Xeni Jardin was a guest on theNewsHour with Jim Lehrer to discussThe Washington Post's decision to remove its Comments section on its website, and she spoke from her experience atBoing Boing.[10] In August 2007,Boing Boing staff launched a redesigned site, which included a restored comment facility, moderated byTeresa Nielsen Hayden. In 2013,Boing Boing switched from the proprietary Disqus comment system toDiscourse, an open-source internet forum developed byJeff Atwood, Robin Ward and Sam Saffron.[11]
In 2004, the project incorporated as Happy Mutants LLC, andJohn Battelle became the blog's business manager.[12][13]Boing Boing, by the mid-2000s, "had become one of the most-read and linked-to blogs in the world" according toFast Company.[5]
The site added advertising over the course of late 2004, placed above and to the left and right of material, and, in 2005, in the site'sRSS feed as well. Editor Cory Doctorow noted that "John [Battelle] said it's going to be harder to make a little money to pay your bandwidth bills than it will be to make a lot of money and have a real source of income from this."[14] The advertising income during the first quarter was already $27,000, and as of 2010[update],Boing Boing still "makes a nice living for its founders and a handful of contract employees", but it is no longer a member of Battelle's blog network Federated Media Publishing, Inc.[5]
Boing Boing featured a "guest blogger" sidebar, then stopped the series in summer of 2004. In 2008, the "guest blogger" series was resumed, with guests posting in the main blog for two-week periods. Guests have includedCharles Platt,John Shirley,Mark Dery,Tiffany Lee Brown, Karen Marcelo ofSurvival Research Laboratories,Johannes Grenzfurthner ofmonochrom,Rudy Rucker,Gareth Branwyn,Wiley Wiggins,Jason Scott oftextfiles.com,Jessamyn West oflibrarian.net, journalistsDanny O'Brien andQuinn Norton and comedianJohn Hodgman.
In September 2006,Boing Boing introduced a weeklypodcast, "Boing Boing Boing", intended to cover the week's posts and upcoming projects. The show's cast consists of theBoing Boing editors, accompanied by a weekly guest. In the same month,Boing Boing introduced a second podcast called "Get Illuminated", which features interviews with writers, artists, and other creatives.
The site's own original content is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license, as of November 2019.[15]
In September 2009,Boing Boing refused to comply with a demand fromPolo Ralph Lauren's lawyers to remove a post concerning a heavily manipulated image of modelFilippa Hamilton, originally published by the Photoshop Disasters blog. The latter was forced to comply with the company's demand by its hosting provider.[16] Ralph Lauren issuedDMCA takedown notices toBoing Boing's ISP andBlogspot, which hosts Photoshop Disasters, claiming their use of the image infringed copyright. Blogspot complied, butBoing Boing's ISP consulted withBoing Boing and agreed that the image wasfair use. As a result,Boing Boing issued a mocking rebuttal,[17] using the same image again and posting the takedown notice.
The rebuttal was widely reported, including on frequently viewed websites such asThe Huffington Post[18] andABC News.[19]
On 3 May 2011, the first podcast of "Gweek" was released.Gweek is a podcast in which the editors and friends ofBoing Boing talk about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, TV shows, music, movies, tools, gadgets, apps, and other "neat" stuff. In the first episode ofGweek, Rob Beschizza and Mark Frauenfelder discussed subjects such as the video gamePortal 2, graphic novels, upcoming science fiction books, and recommendations of some of their favorite adventure games for mobile platforms.Boing Boing has since added several other podcasts.[20]
In November 2017,[21] the site was sued byPlayboy, which alleged that a hyperlink to copyright-infringing content atImgur andYouTube was itself illegal.[22] A Federal Court dismissedPlayboy's claims on 14 February 2018 and Playboy released a statement suggesting that it was standing down on 28 February.[23]
Cory Doctorow leftBoing Boing in January 2020, and soon started a solo blogging project titledPluralistic.[24] The circumstances surrounding Doctorow's exit from the website were unclear at the time, although Doctorow acknowledged that he remained a co-owner ofBoing Boing.[24][25] MetaFilter described the end of the 19-year association between Doctorow andBoing Boing as "the equivalent ofthe Beatlesbreaking up" for the blog world.[25] Doctorow's exit was not acknowledged by Boing Boing, with his name being quietly removed from the list of editors on 29 January 2020.[26]
A "unicorn chaser" is a practice created byBoing Boing editors as anantidote to blog postings linking to sites containing disgusting orshocking images. The shocking post would be immediately followed by another post containing a picture of aunicorn. Xeni Jardin posted the first one (titled "And now, we pause for a Unicorn Moment.") in August 2003 as a reply to a picture of a rash posted by editor Mark Frauenfelder in an attempt to get readers to diagnose it for him.[27] It has also been used as an antidote for posts containing photos of abrain tumor, a man who pumped up the skin of his face withsaline solution, many different ways to clean one'searwax, and a lengthy discussion of the Internet video "2 Girls 1 Cup".
On 18 May 2007,Boing Boing announced thatVirgin America, as part of its "Name Our Planes!" campaign, would be naming one of its new aircraft "Unicorn Chaser", after having askedBoing Boing to suggest a name.[28] An Airbus A320 with registration code N626VA eventually joined the fleet with that name.[29]
In August 2007,Boing Boing introduced a gadgets-focused companion site headed by formerGizmodo editor Joel Johnson. Johnson left in July 2009, to be replaced by Rob Beschizza,[30] formerly ofWired News. Other writers include Steven Leckart and Lisa Katayama.[31] Offworld, a blog covering video games edited byBrandon Boyer, was added in November 2008.[32] These sites were incorporated into Boing Boing itself around 2010.[citation needed] Plans to revive the Offworld site were announced in 2015, withLeigh Alexander as Editor-in-Chief and Laura Hudson as Editor.[33] Leigh Alexander and Laura Hudson left Offworld in early 2016 after publishing a collection of selected articles, successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter in March 2016.[34]
In October 2007,Boing Boing started a new component,Boing Boing TV, that consists of video segments includingSPAMasterpiece Theater (2008) withJohn Hodgman, produced by its co-editors in conjunction with DECA, theDigital Entertainment Corporation of America. Art tech groupmonochrom was a frequent contributor. They created their sock puppet seriesKiki and Bubu forBoing Boing TV.[35][36]
The episodes appear online, as well as on Virgin America flights.[37]
Boing Boing has been described as an "outspoken critic of censorship elsewhere",[38] and operates a high speed, high qualityTor exit node.[39] For example, the act of "disemvoweling" was popularized by the site—literally stripping out the vowels of any comment a moderator had taken exception to.[40][41]
Sex bloggerViolet Blue has been mentioned, interviewed and once contributed atBoing Boing. On 23 June 2008, Blue posted on her blog,Tiny Nibbles,[42] that all posts related to her had been deleted fromBoing Boing, without explanation.[43] TheLos Angeles Times featured an interview that cast the silence on the part ofBoing Boing on the matter as "inexplicable", causing a controversy asBoing Boing "has often presented itself as a stalwart of cultural openness".[44][45] A heated debate ensued after a brief statement on theBoing Boing site regarding this action stated: "Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. It's our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day".[46] In commentary attached to that blog entry, "many commenters surmised that they had something to do with Blue's suing to stop aporn star from also using the name Violet Blue", and many commenters found the removal troubling, but Xeni Jardin said that she hoped she would not have to make the reasons public.[47][48]
Doctorow's name appears as an editor on the Wayback Machine's 2020-01-29 10:09:04 Boing Boing snapshot, but it does not appear on the 2020-01-30 01:25:47 snapshot
