ShortList is supported by you, our amazing readers. When you click through the links on our site and make a purchase we may earn a commission. Learn more

The 12 most epic Fark threads ever

With little help from subby

The 12 most epic Fark threads ever
05 October 2011

If you've ever been on Fark, then you'll be aware that it's not your average news site. While the headlines tend to focus on the stranger side of current affairs (sample headline: Man dies after one car swerves into the path of another on Needmore Road. They certainly did) the comments can often provide a story of their own.

Appealing to an unusually witty and literate crowd (lols are kept for strictly ironic purposes), the threads are worth an exhaustive read. However since there are so many, we've assembled the 12 most epic threads to save you some time. Let us know if we've missed any at the bottom.

(Images: Rex Features, All Star)

12. The pickle incident

It was a normal Photoshop thread from 2002 with the theme "Design a new men's magazine". One of the entries was from a user named LuckyCharms. Apparently, he was attempting to link to a Photoshopped image of a magazine featuring the Starship Enterprise, but due to the transposition of numbers in the image URL, the picture that came up was a close-up of a man with a fairly large pickle lodged halfway up his backside. The fact that LuckyCharms' comment next to the image was "Where no man has gone before!" made it the most amazing double-entendre. Read HERE.

11. Adult-sized superhero pyjamas

So one Saturday night, a Farker gets an idea that he needs a pair of adult-sized superhero pyjamas, so he submits a thread to TFD to ask a few of the people he knows best where he might find something like that. Unfortunately, the Fark admin saw it and figured that more help could be offered if the thread was greenlit to Fark's main page for all to see. Hilarity ensued. Read HERE.

10. Can a lightsaber cut through Adamantium?

Another thread that came through as a time-waster, a simple question with no real answer. The kind of question that people come up with while smoking weed all weekend. Can a lightsaber, which appears to cut through all metal, cut through Adamantium, which is the strongest metal known? Since both of the items were part of completely different science fiction universes, the question was impossible to answer. Which is why Farkers argued about it for two straight days. Read HERE.

9. Drew Curtis NUKES THE POLITICS QUEUE

Fark's founder has been known to occasionally have a drink. After a few unwarranted episodes of purchasing things on eBay that he didn't remember, he tries to separate himself from the computer when drinking, but isn't always successful. One Saturday night, Drew mixed drinking and running the Fark queue and promptly wrapped the entire politics queue around a telephone pole. Read HERE.

8. Politics Headline Goes Here

Inspired by a previous thread, the submitter gave up on writing a conventional headline and went with an extremely sarcastic headline, “Deliberately inflammatory headline regarding political issue distorts actual content of article with intent to provoke irrational conflicts among debaters. Sarcastic request for members of opposing ideology to inhale sharply” and all of the posts in the thread quickly followed suit accordingly.Read HERE.

7. Hot Cocoa Sampler Box

It started with an employee of a company who had been recognized for his commitment and his profitable contribution to the company with a year-end gift of: a hot cocoa sampler box. It started as a thread lamenting really stupid holiday gifts, but as soon as the phrase “hot cocoa sampler box” was in the thread, the Farkers ran with it. And ran with it. And ran with it some more. The Hot Cocoa Sampler Box is now indicative of all awful office gifts. Read HERE.

6. The Grey Wave

Known as the Quaker Guy or the Ha Ha guy, the image of the Anglican or Quaker laughing on an advertisement for “Forbes' Insoluble Dry Plates” had been around a few years, but in 2005 was becoming a staple across nearly every Fark thread. After weeks of the modified image being used across hundreds of threads, a Fark admin posted a mainpage thread encouraging everybody to put the images into the one thread, rather than threadjacking the other threads. Farkers obliged...for over 10 consecutive days. Read HERE.

5. Office Surprise Masturbation

A Farker was running the office in his boss' absence and decided in the afternoon to let some of the staff go a bit early. The only other guy in the office that day wasn't in his cubicle, so the Farker made a quick bathroom check to see if the employee was in there. The employee was in there, but he wasn't going, he was...oh dear. Read HERE.

4. The Real Doll thread

Since threads on Fark are submitted anonymously, sometimes site members submit threads deliberately to provoke a response. This is especially common on TFD (Total Fark Discussion) when things get slow. So when a Farker said he had been saving money for a Real Doll but now had a girlfriend and was conflicted about the money, the moderator outed him. And then greenlit the thread for everybody, which still has some of the funniest captioned Real Doll pictures ever. Read HERE.

3. It's A Streetlight

It was a simple request. A Farker had taken a picture that she couldn't explain. Was it a UFO? Was it aliens? She posted it in the thread, and the very second comment called it out for what it was. It was just a streetlight. Normally, that would be the end of the conversation, but the submittress wasn't sure. She was sure it wasn't a streetlamp, but it couldn't be a plane because it had been hovering, “in the same spot in the sky for a while.” Then everybody told her it was a streetlight. She Did Not Want To Believe, and eventually, Farkers were going out of their way to prove that it actually was a UFO. Maybe. Read HERE.

2. Lipstick cat

When a cat sits down on a counter, is it actually sitting on its haunches, or does its butt actually touch the counter? The thread submitter was having a disagreement with his wife over the decidedly unsanitary situation, and was trying to find out if anybody could help him figure it out. The proposed (perfectly scientific) solution that his wife suggested was to put a bit of lipstick on the cat's...um, butt, and then the next time the cat sat down anywhere, the hypothesis would either be proved or disproved. Instead, the thread turned into a hilarious, rambling discussion of the best way to apply lipstick to a cat's anus. Read HERE.

1. Ballsack conundrum

It was a simple problem. A Farker was reading Fark from his laptop while wearing boxers and lounging in a slatted deck chair. At the end of the day, he decided to get up...which is when he made the uncomfortable discovery that the skin of his testicles had become somehow trapped in the slats of his chair. He asked Fark for help, and the community really rallied behind him. And of course by “rallied behind him” we mean “made fun of him mercilessly for hours.” Read HERE.