AFFotD’s Strangest Search Engine Hits

“Ha, sorry guys, no titties here.”

~AffotD Editor-in-Chief, Johnny Roosevelt

google

Running a website dedicated to Americanness in all of its makingupnessofwordsness forms is a lot like being God.  You wield total power (not only can we delete your comments if we don’t like them, we can edit the text of your comment to make you seem stupid), you are totally in charge of what people can see, and most people don’t have a clue if you exist or not.  Do we let this power go to our head?  Oh, absolutely.

But there’s another aspect to maintaining AFFotD that you might not immediately assume—when you find our website through a google search, it lets us know what you searched for that led you to read our website.  A lot of the times, it’s not anything that’s particularly surprising.  For example, our most searched item is “Popcorn Sutton” because we wrote an article about Popcorn Sutton that had some, well, less than ideal writing decisions, but people finding our site searching that name, that just makes sense.  Additionally, we’ve had over 2,000 people find our page searching for “ugly cow” because we once wrote an article that had a picture of an ugly cow.  Google is not nearly as sophisticated as all their algorithm talk would have you believe.

cow_800

“Ha, that cow is CRAZY!”

~Google Executives

Naturally, people will use odd and occasionally sketchy search terms that somehow leads to them stumbling onto our site.  These search engine hits generally range from “very strange” to “ha ha ha ha oh man y’all search for boobs a lot, you’re going to be really pissed off when you click that link and end up staring at a grizzly bear toting a shotgun.”  Today, we’re going to focus on some of the weirder terms we’ve run into.

AFFotD’s Strangest Search Engine Hits

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Wherein AFFotD Screams “Are You Fucking Kidding Me, They’re BUGS” With Righteous Frustration Towards the Fiends at the Mother Nature Network

“The Vegans are coming, the vegans are coming!”

~AFFotD Office Sentries

bugs

Hi.  This might seem like an extreme non-sequitur, but vegans kind of hate us, largely because we loathe vegans.  We say “meat is the best part of living, ergo, vegans are zombies, and we must destroy their brains” and they flock to our site to say “You are a total ignoramus!  Feel sorry for you!  Enjoy your rectal cancer ugly people” because that’s an actual comment left on this website by someone who was mad at us making fun of vegan diets and apparently 95% of America’s vegan population doesn’t have a sense of humor.  The other 5% are no longer vegan because they just succumbed to their base urges, and started eating someone’s brains (because they’re fucking zombies) (but brains aren’t vegan) (so they’re not vegan anymore) (just zombies).

This will all make sense in a little bit, but first, let’s talk about eating bugs.

A surprising amount of cultures include insects as part of their basic diets.  This is called Entomophagy, which is Latin for “eww gross, ha ha, it’s all crawly, hee hee.”  It’s common in developing nations, but lately, taboos about eating bugs are being challenged in first world countries like America by nutritionists pointing out that insects are high in protein, efficient to produce for consumption, and aren’t that gross just grow the fuck up, you haven’t even tried it, okay, just take one bite and if you don’t like it we’ll let you have some chicken.

Our stance on the issue might be surprising to those of you expecting us to demand that the world eat a diet of only bacon and steak (which, admittedly, not a bad call) but we’re totally for people eating bugs.  Some of our writers have actually done so (not in the “eating worms on the playground to make friends because they were lonely children” way…well, not exclusively that way) and they said they were delicious.  People think of eating bugs as digging into worming live messes, which is gross, but it’s also gross trying to bite into a chicken’s thigh as it runs for its life.  Cooked and prepared insects can be surprisingly good—crickets taste like shrimp, most larvae are kind of mushroomy, crickets are deep fried so they taste like everything that’s deep fried (delicious), and some other insects even taste like bacon.  All of these are good things!  We guess some people like the “sustainability” of the food source, but we don’t care—we’ll always welcome an added excuse to try to eat something that once lived on this Earth and has been killed specifically to address the fact that we’ve been drinking since 4PM and man, we should probably get some food in there before going out to the bars.

So to bring our two points together.

Our friends at the Mother Nature Network (sarcasm) posted an article a few months back by their blogger, “Starre Vartan,” entitled, “Eating insects is better than eating meat, but is it any more ethical?”  So we’re going to spend quite some time bashing our head into a wall for a while, and writing down whatever curse words come to mind in the process.  Enjoy.

Wherein AFFotD Screams “Are You Fucking Kidding Me, They’re BUGS” With Righteous Frustration Towards the Fiends at the Mother Nature Network

         screaming man               

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Swerve: Coca-Cola’s Almost Alcoholic Milk Product For School Lunches

Make it alcoholic!  No wait, make it milk for school lunches!  Fuck it, we’re drunk, do whatever.”

~Coca-Cola Executives

coca cola

We recently waxed the-opposite-of-poetic about Coca-Cola produced beverages that we found, to put it politely, shitty as shit.  In doing our research for that article, we stumbled across a single product, available from 2003 to 2005, that we felt belonged on our list, until a quick look at its history let us know that, no, this drink is wonderful, and the most American thing we can think of, and we wish we had it today.

That drink is Swerve.

Swerve is a milk drink, but it’s so much more.  It’s a microcosm of the product development process of modern day American consumerism.  It’s an opportunistic combination of bad ideas and impractical dreams.  It’s beautiful and it’s ugly and it’s everything about America, all mixed together into a sweetened milk drink.

Let’s talk about Swerve.

Swerve:  Coca-Cola’s Almost Alcoholic Milk Product For School Lunches

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AFFotD News Item of the Month: Bud Light Mixxtail Cocktails

“Forsake your God, because all that lies herein is death and fire and petulance, and none can save you, none shall live.”

~Official Budweiser Press Release

 mixxtail

Listen, America, this shit is important.  You need to start ignoring Budweiser.  We’re already on the way to phasing out Budweiser, with 44% of drinkers aged 21 to 27 having never had a Bud in their wonderfully enriched lives, but we’re getting to the point where Budweiser is going to do its best to get your attention, and you mustn’t let it.  Much like a misbehaving child or, more accurately, an emotionally unstable ex who keeps sending you messages no matter what you do, Budweiser is going to get more and more loud with their terrible, awful beerness before they start to fade away.  It’s going to take a long time, but we have to do whatever we can to ignore Budweiser’s “U Out?  I’m not wareing undrware ;P” texts while we can, because the company has clearly gone insane and there’s no sign of them letting up for now, and our only course of action is to close our eyes and hope they go away.

In 2011, Anheuser-Busch purchased Goose Island in their attempt to corner a market that saw more and more Americans shunning Budweiser for beer that, you know, tastes good.  The following year, they brought forth Bud Light Platinum, which you might know as “why does my beer taste like someone drizzled like, three sips worth of vodka in here?”  2012 also saw the creation of the Lime-a-Rita, which is a great way for people who don’t like alcohol to remind themselves that they really need to sit down and reevaluate their lives.

lime a rita

“I like it because it’s fruity, but it still can get you drunk, and oh God how did I end up passed out in a Walmart?”

Lately, Budweiser has been playing the role of the petulant child, spending millions of dollars to shout at Americans for “tasting” their beer instead of “drinking it” during the Super Bowl which, frankly, sounds like the kind of thing you’d hear Joe Rogan say as encouragement to a contestant of Fear Factor during the gross-out food part of the show. “Don’t taste it!  Just eat it!  If you manage not to puke you go on to the next round!”

Which brings us to the latest shout of “Mommy mommy look what I can do” that is set to be released on February 16th (oh darn, it’ll just miss Valentine’s Day, huh?) and also our latest totally-not-monthly installment of…

AFFotD News Item of the Month: Bud Light Mixxtail Cocktails

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The Craziest Nuclear Weapon Plans In American History

The 2014 T-Shirt Line From The Mountain (Retrospectively)

“Wait, it’s been over a year since we wrote about The Mountain?  Shit, get on it, gentlemen!”

~AFFotD Editor-in-Chief, Johnny Roosevelt

 beer shirt

We normally start off these columns saying, “By now, you probably know our relationship with The Mountain” but, in all actuality, we’ve sort of let things slip a bit in the AFFotD offices.  Normally, two, three, fuck it, four times a year, we’d see that The Mountain had a new Big Face line of shirts, or a Holiday series, and just talk about the glorious insanity that are the shirt designs made by the company that brought you a lot of funny amazon.com user reviews.  Sometimes, the head of the company (no seriously) would even check in to either snark at us or joke along with us in response to our articles.  Is this what being famous is like?  Probably not!  But either way, we always tried to check in with our pals at The Mountain to see what new brands of insanity they wanted to cover people’s man boobs with.

We weren’t particularly great about that in 2014, which is why when we went to The Mountain to see what’s up, we were greeted with a whole slew of T-shirts we hadn’t seen before.  So, naturally, it was time for us to pick out some of the more meth-is-a-helluva-drug ones and let you know about them.  Get ready, folks, these get a little weird.

The 2014 T-Shirt Line From The Mountain (Retrospectively)

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Wherein AFFotD Celebrates its 4th Anniversary, Looking Inward and Critiquing the Failings of its 10 Most Popular Articles: A Douchey and Pretentious Meta Exercise by our Laziest Writers

“Alright, let me have it.”

~AFFotD Editor-in-Chief, Johnny Roosevelt

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When people are asked to describe America Fun Fact of the Day, the most common responses tend to be “brilliant,” “incredible,” “life-affirming” and “What the fuck is AFFotD, what are you doing in my house, where are your clothes, oh God you reek of whiskey, that’s it, I’m calling the fucking cops.”  However, every once and a while, a handful spineless dick-cough weasel pansies say that we’re “harsh and kind of mean.”  Specifically, people say that when we take the time out of our day to viciously insult people that aren’t living up to our standard of Americaness.  This usually occurs when we write articles with lengthy titles that begin “Wherein” and result in 3,000 word screeds that mercilessly and often personally attack and insult the writers of stupid articles about Thanksgiving, Fortune Magazine, or, um, small children.

kid

The fuck you looking at, punk?

Since today marks the 4th anniversary of affotd.com existing as a website as opposed to a series of note cards jammed randomly into a file cabinet labeled “The Internet!” in our editor-in-chief’s bedroom closet, we figured it was time to turn the mirror on ourselves.  That’s right, we’re gonna rip into our own articles, which is totally not a fancy way to avoid creating any new content of value.  No, shut up, this has nothing to do with the fact that most of our research staff is hungover out of their minds.  Shut up.  Just, okay?

So we looked up the 10 most viewed articles in the history of America Fun Fact of the Day thus far, and will review and deconstruct every one of them.  For science, or whatever.

Wherein AFFotD Celebrates Their 4th Anniversary, Looking Inward and Critiquing the Failings of its 10 Most Popular Articles: A Douchey and Pretentious Meta Exercise by our Laziest Writers

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The Worst Coca-Cola Products in the World

“This is by far the worst idea you’ve had, and you used to put cocaine in your drink and try to sell it to kids.”

~Coca-Cola Product Consultants Shortly Before Being Shouted Down

daft punk coke

Coca-Cola holds an important place in America’s heart, and its economy.  Ever since their humble beginnings as a non-alcoholic version of the poorly named John Pemberton’s French Wine Cola nerve tonic in Atlanta in 1886, originally-addictive-as-shit and still-technically-addictive beverage has grown to become the most valuable brand in the world, raking in over 45 billion dollars a year, with the power to do anything they want, from brushing aside antitrust legislation proposed by Pepsi to allegedly getting Colombian union leaders assassinated.  The point being, Coca-Cola is an ingrained cultural and economic powerhouse, with dozens, if not hundreds, of brands and varieties across America and the globe.

Naturally, a very large part of Coca-Cola’s whole “made enough money in 2014 to surpass the GDP of 83 different countries” popularity comes from the fact that they make a delicious, American product.  Coca-Cola is wonderful, and anyone who says otherwise is a Pepsi executive who contractually has to say that he hates Coke, even though we all know that Coke and Pepsi are the most interchangeable beverages imaginable.  The taste preference in Cola brands generally falls between “the sweet one” and “the slightly sweeter one” with a handful of outliers saying, “I prefer the organic cola from Whole Foods because ouch stop that why are you flicking my ear that’s extremely annoying okay you know what you clearly don’t want a dialogue so I’ll just leave, you assholes.”  But, Coke came first, and Coke is the world leader, and even if we might prefer the slightly sweeter one, Coca-Cola can do no wrong.

Well, okay that’s not true.  They can do a lot of wrong.  The following is wrong.

The Worst Coca-Cola Products in the World

guys come on this garlic coke thing is a scam

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The 6 Most Expensive American-Brewed Beers

“Oh, that seems a fair price for such a delicious…*chugs entire bottle* *runs the fuck out*”

~AFFotD staffer when presented with one of America’s most expensive beers

 fancy beer

The 21st century is a great time to like beer.  While America spent the 1970s thinking that managing to score a case of Coors was something to actually be excited about, and we had to blindly choose between “Bud” or “Miller” at most bars before deciding, “Fuck that, I’ll just chug some Listerine instead, it’ll get more drunk and tastes a little better” we now live in a nation where there are enough distinct and delicious varieties of beer that even people who swear they “hate beer” can find a style they love.

Now, much like there are still people who believe that the Earth if flat, or that Little Fockers is the best movie Ben Stiller has ever made, some drinkers hopelessly cling to Budweiser and Miller as “what a real beer tastes like!”  If you dare to point out that Budweiser tastes like someone put a handful of straw in a wet sock that they poured a bottle of tonic water in, they’ll ball up their fists and shout, “I like this beer ‘cause it’s cheap!  It’s refreshing when you make it cold enough that you can’t taste it that well!  Something negative about IPAs!”

While we might be being harsh in saying that these people are troglodytes, we do know that they just Googled the word “troglodyte” and said, “Hey, fuck you too assholes!” to their screen as if we can hear them (we cannot).

budweiser commercial

We love it when beer commercials make our point for us.

However, the main point that people who defend inferior beer (“mer mer that’s elitist I like my beer cold and my mer mer mer”) make is that Budweiser, Miller, and Coors are all, well, very cheap.  Granted, there are cheaper beers out there that taste better, but that’s not saying much—you can have a very basic, cheap lager that will do the job to get you drunk, and people can rightfully point out that a twelve pack of cheap shitty beer costs about the same as a six pack of okay craft beer.  We don’t dispute this, but we should point out that the shitty beer tends to be about 4% alcohol per volume, while you can get that okay craft beer at around 8% or 9%, meaning you’ll get drunker faster on better beer, so why the hell are you so desperately clinging to your macrobrew?

That being said, the boon of microbrewing and homebrewing in America means that now, more than ever before, we’ve had an almost infinite options of great beer at our disposal.  Unfortunately, with that boon in popularity comes gimmicks, and one of those gimmicks involves limited release beers that cost you more than you can really justify spending on a beer.  These are beers that cost $50 or more, and even at that price, require you wait in line and fight off hundreds of other craft beer nerds, desperate to taste a forbidden fruit that really probably tastes about as good as a $10 beer of comparable quality.

So we’re going to throw a bone to those of you reading this shouting (again, we can’t hear you) “Fancy beers are for sissies!  They cost too much!  I like Coors Light and being punched in the dick, you know, manly drinks!” by addressing the one negative side effect of the craft beer boon.  Obnoxiously expensive beers.  And so, we present to you…

The 6 Most Expensive American-Brewed Beers

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Jog N’ Vom: America’s Official Food and Drink Races

“Chug chug chug chug chew chew chew chew run run run run!”

~Only the Most American of Runners

pizza run

Americans either love or hate exercising.  Sure, you can find some middle ground of, people that guess they should go for a jog today, but generally speaking, you have two camps of American exercisers—the kind of person that gets really into their workout journal, and the kind of person who actively brags that they go out of the way to limit their day to day physical exertions as much as possible.  The stereotypes are in place—you have the cross-fit trainer on a Paleo diet, or you have the overweight American chugging a beer while eating a ChipoHut Taco (that’s where you take a Chipotle burrito, put it inside a full Pizza Hut pizza, and fold the whole thing into a massive taco).

Naturally, the latter is the more American option.  However, in the past few years, people who “exercise” and “take care of their bodies” and “can go up a flight of stairs without running out of breath” have seemingly taken a hard look at themselves and said, “Yes, I should still exercise, but maybe I can find a way to do it while also being a little unhealthy, which sounds a lot more fun.”

We’ve coined a term for this kind of slightly unhealthy, exponentially more fun exercise—the Jog N’ Vom.  Basically, dozens of races have sprung up across America that don’t want you to just run an arbitrary distance while they time you—they want you to incorporate drinking or eating something super unhealthy into your run, turning your 5K into an eating or drinking competition, which is a wonderful thing.

So, for you health nuts out there that still want to be the best American you can be, we present with you a (fairly) comprehensive list of the races that let you be bad while being good.

Jog N’ Vom:  America’s Official Food and Drink Races

beer run      

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