Over time I’ve noticed that the complaints follow some general patterns, so I’ve made an attempt to describe the categories that FMLs fall into.

Something totally normal happened and it reminded me of how I’m a loser

These FMLs describe a typical every day event.  Then, the author says something vague about how their life sucks that is loosely related to what happened.  These usually end up with a high “You Deserved It” (YDI) rating.

Today, I saw a couple of beetles doing it. Jealous, I quickly crushed them with my boot while screaming, “IF I CAN’T DO IT, NOBODY WILL!” All the little kids playing on the local playground, including parents supervising them, gave me dirty, confused looks. FML

Today, I finally beat the song “Through the Fire and Flames” on Guitar Hero 3. I then realized that it was the biggest accomplishment I’ve ever made in my entire life. FML

Today, while playing The Sims 2, I realized I had a virtual person’s whole life planned out, and have nothing planned out for myself. FML

Something that is actually pretty fucked up happened, but I was drunk so I shouldn’t expect any sympathy

Again, you’re going to get a high YDI index with these.

Today, I went to my girlfriend’s sorority formal, we were both drunk. We went into the bathroom, she started to give me head. After about 30 seconds the song changes and she jumps up and goes out to dance, leaving me there. Door open. Penis out. It was the song she requested. FML

A family member was ridiculously mean

Quite the opposite of the last two, these get a lot of sympathy.  I actually hope that the majority of these are exaggerated or fake.

Today, was my birthday. After hinting for almost 2 months for a Wii, my dad pulls out a shiny new Wii Package. The only problem? The box didn’t have a Wii in it. My dad gave me a Wii box with my VCR inside and a note saying “This is life. Once you think you’re happy, someone crushes it”. FML

Trips down south

Seems to be a recurring theme.  The matter-of-fact way the issue is addressed is usually a little bizarre.

Today, my parents hosted a party at our house. After seeing one of the extremely beautiful guests, I went to masturbate in my room. When I was about to finish, my bedroom door opened suddenly. It was my mom showing around 10 party guests that our dog can open doors. FML

Twilight

These might just be recurring pranks based on other comical complaints about how this movie has heightened teenage females’ expectations of the opposite gender.  As with the previous one, you start to wonder about the age range of the typical submitters on this site.

Today, after spending the night hanging out with a beautiful girl we start to walk back to my place. Halfway there she turns and says, “I wish you were a vampire” and goes back home. FML

Clearly fake

Obviously plenty of people make submissions of fictional scenarios just for the fun of it.  However, some people don’t seem to be trying too hard, and just recycle scenarios from jokes and television.

Today, I graduated from college and my parents gave me an apple. Not the computer, the fruit. FML

Can’t make this shit up

On the other hand, some FMLs are so bizzare that it must have happened, as no one would ever dream such a thing up.

Today, I was walking in the park when I saw an attractive girl walking nearby. I approached her to strike up a conversation when suddenly a large fly invaded my left nostril, and became lodged inside. After picking out the bloody fly pieces, I looked up to see the girl walking away, gagging. FML

Today, my boss requested that I re-organize every file in the office, because she wanted the filing cabinets alphabetized right to left, not left to right. To thank me, she came into my office to give me one uncooked ear of corn. I think my boss has mistaken me for some kind of farm animal. FML

Holy crap, that’s awful

The highest sympathy rating of all goes to these FMLs.  They make you want to track down the poster to give them a hug.  Usually relationship related.

Today, my boyfriend invited me over so I went, not thinking anything of it. To my surprise, he broke up with me. I was pretty upset, and as I was leaving his mom hands me a box. When I got home I opened it. His mom baked me a break up cake. FML

Today, my girlfriend’s dad asked me if I wanted to drive his 2008 Jaguar XKR. Excitedly, I agreed. He then spent the next hour discussing with me how masturbation is a great alternative to sex, and a great way to remain abstinent. I didn’t get to drive. FML

Today, I woke up happier than I’ve ever been because last night I hooked up with the girl I have loved for almost a year and I thought I would never get with her. This morning I saw that her status on facebook was FML. FML

Wow.  I get no commitment pricing with a 2-year commitment!  And as a valued customer, I get a discounted upgrade at a higher price.

It is like no one even read this to make sure it made sense, or is just doing a terrible job trying to make me feel like their miserable offer is a favor of some kind.

This pattern creator is neat, but I’m curious about their use of Creative Commons.  Can (or should) you really apply a Creative Commons license to the output of this kind of tool?  To me it seems akin to if Adobe said that they have a license for anything you create with Photoshop.

For a long time, e-commerce sites were prohibitively annoying to set up.  Weebly’s new features are one of the reasons that this is no longer the case.

Speaking of CMSs, I like the idea of hosted CMSs designed for a particular type of site.  Enjin is a gaming CMS that understands what their audience wants and focuses on doing that really well.

3D items made to your specification?  I’m pretty sure everyone has wanted this service to exist at one point or another.

I admit to being a fan of interactive fiction.  And Zork is free now, so hooray!

I enjoy careful timing in re-purposed comics and blob rodents.

“I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!”

Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord in Truppenführung

This survey is:

• Short.  From just a glance I can tell I am 1 click away from finishing the survey.  The start of a survey of unknown length that scrolls off the page is far less inviting.
• Relevant to my life.  How quickly games appear in the mail is something I actually care about.
• Showing interest.  It says “Hey, did you get that game we sent you?” rather than a less personal “Rate our service on a scale of 1 to 10.”

In addition to my being pleased with it, I’m sure GameFly gets useful data from these.

How do you make a better organizational tool than a list?  Adding features generally adds friction, and since the list is already fully functional,  the first trade-off made to add a single feature is probably not worth it.  Unless you do it exactly right.

This is why until lately I’ve simply used text files for my lists.  There are tons of applications out there for keeping organized, but none of them seem to offer features that balance out the additional effort to use them. Backpack from 37signals outdoes the text file.  The software is expressive, flexible, and simple.  Through legendary attention to detail, sweating the small stuff, and resisting the urge to unnecessarily complicate, their software matches the usefulness of the mighty text file.

This software has been around for awhile, though, and until now I have never used it regularly.  What changed?  Now, after all the work put into being as good as a text file, now there is a way in which it is better: access on my iPhone via Satchel.  Satchel is dead simple, nicely organized, and easy to use.  Now that I can access my lists from more places than I could with a plain text file, I have reason to change to Backpack.

Backpack has a free version, and Satchel is $9.99 on the iPhone app store.  Give them a try!

A decent button maker. I like looking at these.  The idea has been around forever, but they’re still improving as internet technologies evolve.

An excellent wine label.  Buying wine by the label actually isn’t an awful idea.   I always feel like people who care about making an excellent product also care more about making it look presentable.

I like this music video.  Sometimes creativity comes from limitations.

Can you guess how big this is by its shape?  A visual metaphor can communicate something other than function yet still be effective and fun.

Art

Mmm, political street art, featuring Hobo Lincoln.

Amazing art from Yap Kun Rong at CGPortfolio.

Tools and Resources

I’m thinking about using Gravity’s Tags app to organize my music.  It seems like a generally useful tool.

I love data.  Here is a SQL database of IP addresses to location mappings.

Whatever

I love it when someone takes something simple and does it exactly right.   Even if it is a pretty pointless product like Fail Stickers. (yes,  I bought some)

I went through every single one of these.  I have no regrets.  It is here that I found the best image ever.

Omegle drops you in a chat with a stranger.  I have been enjoying gathering anonymous opinions about items on the Taco Bell menu.

Fin

This is fun because you can see this on any website. I have only tried this in Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 on Windows, but compare these URLs:

Page with short URL

Same page with long URL parameters added

The WMP APIs are pretty embarrassing, but for me, this one takes the cake.

Here is a stock site just for silhouettes.  Quality, free, focused stock sites are hard to find.

SFXR is small app for quickly making old-school video game sound effects.  The joy here is that they have predefined parameters for types of effects, such as “jump”, and you can choose a randomly generated sound within those parameters, then randomly mutate or manually tweak it.  Much faster than creating sounds from scratch.

When dealing with 256 pixels, pixel-art becomes a much more useful skill.  Hence this nifty tool for creating favicons.

You may have seen Flickr’s tool for searching by color.  It is amazingly fun, but the real reason to toss it in the toolbox is because so many of Flickr’s images are Creative Commons licensed nowadays, oftentimes making them valid as stock or blog dressing.

Art

Concept Ships is a blog dedicated solely to concept art of space ships.  I love this stuff.

Along those lines, here is a site with lots more concept art.  It’s easy to get lost wandering around this site.  They really need an RSS feed with featured artists though, or something along those lines at least.

Random

Per usual.