OMFG! Why did you say "official site?"

Jeesus! I am sick and tired of all the bullshit that gets spouted out by sites claiming to be the "official" this or that.

Not only that, but most don't even bother to try and give perspective - they are usually some fucking stupid low-life anorak who can't even be bothered to admit the site is as unofficial as a fucking watermelon that claims to have founded Atlantis!

Why? Why bother? Why not just call yourself a "fansite" or "stalker" or summat? You fucking morons!

So many exist it sickens me.

First there was the whole gamut of websites when the net was born, all domain names registered by Mr Small to fuck-up big companies (or did so as a result) who then had to buy the sites off their owners for high fees. Examples include Dennis Toeppen (Panavision.com and Panaflex.com) who offered the Panavision site for $13,000 as it would be "cheaper than suing him". One of my favourites was the guy from San Jose, California, who bought altavista.com for his own software company and sold it to Compaq for $3.3 million in 1999. (NYT article here) The whole thing went a little crazy, especially with things such as AOL successfully getting rights to a site in 2001 registered as Aimster.com, with AOL claiming that they should own it because they have AOL IM - in my mind that is wrong, so wrong.

Then we had websites who claimed to be the official sites of people who we know full well were incapable of understading a computer, let a lone getting a modem hooked up and writing html. Next came the MySpace/Facebook/Twitter bollox, is it really them? is it someone else?

The latest, in fact the one that made me wince the most was the Elmore Leonard "official site" written by his researcher, one Gregg Sutter. There isn't even a fucking word written by Leonard himself, it's all written by this "researcher", who I suspect is only trying to get himself some money because Leonard doesn't need him atm. Anyway, enough of that bollox. There are so many, admittedly most are of a lower calibre than the EL site, after all it is one place that I can find info on my fav TV show, Justified.

http://www.elmoreleonard.com "The Official Elmore Leonard Website"

(P.S. He has his own website at http://greggsutter.com/wordpress/ where he wanks over how he has known Mr Leonard for thirty years)

At the end of the day Joe Public might as well as go for a blind date with some "fit young hot chick" off the net: she will turn out to be a 50yr old guy who lives with his mum in the basement and likes young boys and the "young man seeks older for lessons" will just be 50 yr old Joe who did it for a prank.