Stile Project

Stile Project is a website maintained by a Canadian writer and webmaster with the online alias of Jay Stile. Stile Project has grown into a large network of counter-culture, amateur adult entertainment and current-events sites, forums, and more, collectively called [http://www.stilenet.com stileNET] .

Inception

Stile began the website in his last year of high school as a way to alleviate boredom. Before the word "blog" was a common part of the English lexicon, Stile was updating his website multiple times a day, starting in the summer of 1999. Since he was already using the internet for several hours a day as a social outlet, he decided to catalog and write about all the peculiarities he came across on his daily travels, along with whatever was on his mind at that particular time. He posted rants with links to other sites of interest across the web, along with video clips and images he came across. Most of the links were of comedic, weird, adult, or gruesome content in nature. The site was one of the first blogs on the Internet to gain a large worldwide audience. Stile stated that he lives in his mother's basement while endlessly browsing the web, occasionally venturing out to go on interesting adventures that end in some awkward or disturbing human interactions.

Stile Project gained massive popularity after the webmaster faked his own suicide live on his webcam in 1999. Howard Stern talked about the suicide stunt on the air, and Marilyn Manson once had linked to the site from his own page, which resulted in huge bursts of traffic hits to the site. The site has developed a large and loyal following and has contributed to the popularity of internet memes such as the Goatse shock site and the "All Your Base" phenomenon.

Awards

Stile Project won Webby Awards in [http://www.webbyawards.com/press/press-release.php?id=33 2000] for "Weird" site and "People's Voice" winner, but has slowly evolved into a media portal of comedic, porn, and shock content with less focus on Stile's writing and more emphasis on the media posted.

Innovations

Stile Project was the home of the web's first "cam portal", helping to popularize the webcam phenomenon. Mostly nude females would post pictures of themselves with webcams in an interactive, streaming format. The Stile Project webcam portal eventually evolved into a separate website called [http://www.camwhores.com Cam Whores] .

Stile Project has spawned a very popular forum, originally known as the SPF (Stile Project Forum) which has also been spun off and renamed [http://www.theforum.com TheForum.com] , one of the largest on the internet.

Stile Project has been a trend setter in its genre, with other similar sites cloning much of its unique functionality.

Criticism

As the site has evolved, the Stile Project's contents have grown increasingly pornographic. Critics of the site would contend that it now serves as little more than a web portal to pornography. Stile used to post several times a day, though that has not been the trend for several years now. Stile still occasionally writes blog entries, features counter-culture writers such as Produkt, and posts non-pornographic images and videos.

Some content has been criticized for its shock value. Particularly, a [http://www.stileproject.com/kitty.html video] showing a Korean man killing, cooking, and eating a kitten was highly publicized and denounced. [http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2001/08/46315?currentPage=all]

Associations

* Stile is a former member of the underground art scene groups ACiD and iCE. His specialty was designing ANSI logos for art group projects and bulletin board systems in the early 90s. [http://www.stileproject.com/readermail7.html]
* Stile used to be a SysOp of several BBSs back in the early 90s that he ran from his home as a teen.

ee also

* Cam whore
* List of shock sites

External links

* [http://www.stileproject.com/ Stile Project] (contains adult content)
* [http://www.stilenet.com/ stileNET]