First I created a LOLcat. Image supplied (with approval of course) by the lovely Malingering. Who takes the coolest cat photos.

Then we synchronized our watches and at exactly 11am PST we all adjusted our Apache .htaccess file with a few simple lines. Now any hot linked image on the douche site is replaced by the LOLcat.

“Did you ever notice that when you hate or just call shit out you get far more response than when you just talk about news or talk about positive shit? I love that…” –Brink

Here’s what happened… Some IRC nerd pasted the emo beatdown picture, which was hosted on Imageshack. I thought it was hilarious and wanted to it link to whoever came up with it. I searched and searched, but all I found were a buncha forums posts, non of them linking to the origins of the image. I then decided to put it on THC.

Please note that THC is just a little blog by and for friends. There’s absolutely no purpose to our site. We review tooth brushes for fucks sake, how lame can you get?

When I posted the image, I was making fun of two of our buddies: Dennys and Brink. Both support the emo hairdo, but not the emo culture. And even if they were emo, I wouldn’t have cared anyway, both guys rule. As you can tell by the first comments, they were totally going along with the joke.

But then it all hell broke loose…

Somehow a lost Myspace kid found our site, saw the image and linked to it. Within minutes our site got hammered and more and more sites started to pick it up and linking to us. They kept coming and coming, leaving pro and anti comments. Our page views went thru the roof.

Eventually the creator of the image, Haters Online, also showed up and pointed out that he started the National Emo Kid Beatdown Day. I could finally give a hat-tip to him and I updated the post accordingly. His site rules btw, he even has a Haterpedia. Brilliant!

But that didn’t stop the kids from leaving comments. Lisa left the best comment, I was ready to be featured on CNN that night! Also hilarious is this g33k who really thought we started it all and now ph34rz we are gonna DoS attack his site. One poor emo kid even created the Anti Emo Beatdown day.

Anywayz, it’s all over now, and things are almost back to normal. We’re talking about useless TV shows again, and we even had our first guest blogger: Nic from Pushingwood, posting about Ping Pong. More guest bloggers to come…

Update: I left a comment on Andrew Barr’s blog post (the g33k sans humor) with a link to this post in the hopes it would explain the situaish to him. He immediately moderated my comment and emailed me: “Learn to spell. Then people might take you halfway seriously.” Yeah buddy, go listen to Sting and watch the Lion King for the 666th time.

• Some funny links
• Daily, Monthly links to some cool stuff
• Camping gear and sick member benefits, if you like outdoor shit
• I like his random photos and he sort of coined the name “Hot Crew” which refered to pro skaters or well known AMs
• Sick photos for desktops
• Don’t be a victim
• I miss our coffee times
• Best Jeans: Standard and Skinny
• F#ck Ebay for shoes
• Art shit and some cool political crap at times. Sam G is a dick though, but you knew that
• Real news minus the fear bullshit.

I’ve decided to take thehotcrew.com with me since Metzger was the one that came up with the name anyways. No idea what we’re gonna do with it, but if you’re looking for the The in-house web department of Sole Technology, Inc., check out The Colab. For now I’m going on a small vacation to check out my parents new crib in Spain.

Fun fact: I’ve always said if Koston would leave éS, I would leave. An hour after I put in my resignation letter a press release was sent out that Koston quit. And on May 1st, the day I start at Incase, Koston is officially with his new sponsor.