Web Surfing
By Daily Bruin Staff
June 6, 2001 9:00 p.m.
Scooter Death
www.scooterdeath.com For
those who have been almost mowed down by someone riding a scooter
at 100 mph down Bruin Walk, which is pretty much everyone,
scooterdeath.com offers a chance for revenge. Hilariously railing
against the scooter fad, the Web site opens with a few introductory
paragraphs that decry the sudden invasion of scooters riders.
“Some are losers desperate for attention, others are simply
normal people desperate for attention,” the text reads. After
clicking on the “tell me more” button, the reader finds
instructions on getting retribution. “You must dish out your
justice by hurling bricks at the heads of these filthy
deviants,” it reads. These directions are to be carried out
in the Flash animated game that follows the scooter fiends on the
Web site, not in real life of course. The game, a deceptively
simple exercise in target practice, is way more entertaining than
it has any right to be. The player aims at four characters that
cruise along the street on their scooters (one, is even talking on
a cell phone), while trying to avoid four other pedestrians ““
an elderly man and woman, a teen-ager on a skateboard and a cat.
The player has one minute to complete the task. It is a simple
game, but one that takes some skill. Scores of up to 210 all
received the heartwarming message, “Your score sucks! Bad
luck loser.” Meanwhile, attempts to get a score that
didn’t “suck” were unsuccessful. No doubt,
though, the messages that accompanied higher scores were equally
rude, and thus equally funny. The game is enhanced by the highly
repetitive, and yet still enjoyable opus “Scooter
Death,” a song that consists of a few guitar riffs, a digital
drum beat and the recurring line, “Scooter death, scooter
death.” Sure, it doesn’t stand on its own as a song,
but it adds to the game’s amusement. Rather unfortunately,
the game and its opening paragraphs are the sole inhabitants of
this Web site. On one hand this is a plus, as the viewer
doesn’t have to sort through pages of boring fluff to get to
the game, but on the other, the entirety of the site can be
examined in less than 10 minutes. It may not be much, but Scooter
Death is inexplicably satisfying, and it saves the effort of taking
some kind of active revenge in the real world.
Mary Williams Rating: 8
Who Would You Kill?
www.whowouldyoukill.com
It is a sad truth is that the average Internet user is not
nearly smart, funny or creative enough to hold anyone’s
attention for long. Whowouldyoukill.com, a Web site that relies
entirely on reader responses, suffers greatly as a consequence. The
site asks viewers which TV character they would kill off in each of
about 100 popular series, past and present. Participants also have
an opportunity to describe how they want the character to die. Any
potential for humor was lost when the creators of the Web site
decided to turn the content over to the public. Instead of
hilarious and well-crafted death scenes, most responses are crude,
unoriginal and not at all entertaining. Rather than parodying the
shows or characters, the entries are generally nonsensical and more
violent than anything else. “Felicity walks out on the
street, because she’s crying about her Ben, and how
she’s never going to see him again … she gets shot down by
a squadron of B15’s,” wrote one visitor to the page,
regarding the demise of Felicity, his chosen victim of the show
bearing the same name. This entry was one of three that made it to
the “Best Responses” section of the Felicity pages.
Those that didn’t make the cut can be found on a linked page,
and they are even less entertaining. This secondary page of
responses is preceded by a warning that correctly acknowledges that
the content of the remaining responses is very often offensive.
 Gang rape and torture are two popular plot devices in the
murder of various characters, and the overall effect is often
sickening with little or no humorous elements. The idea of a Web
site where annoying TV characters are killed off in imaginary
episodes is a good one. Here, however, it is executed poorly by
those who appear to lack enough intelligence, creativity or wit to
write anything but stories of brutal and unnecessary violence.
Often, it isn’t even the annoying characters that receive the
most votes, but merely the lead characters. This gets monotonous
after awhile, as do the reasons and modes of their undeserving
deaths. Overall, the laughs are few and far between, and
whowouldyoukill.com serves only to give a voice to people whose
opinions are illogical and completely uninteresting.
Mary Williams Rating: 3
