Awful Link of the Day

Awful Media

The first thought -- also, the second, third and fourth -- upon visiting Edward Jeffries' site is that this must be an elaborate fraud. While terrible sites are as common as ever, guilelessly terrible sites have become increasingly rare in this interactive era, because the people behind those atrocities receive negative feedback and either make corrections, attempt to convert to intentional campy shittiness, or flee the Internet entirely. No site in recent memory has sounded the "Too Bad to Be True" alarm quite like EJsFilms.com. But if it were real, my God, if it were real...

Jeffries has disabled ratings on his YouTube videos, which suggests he's really trying to make good art and that he's sensitive about his creations -- OR -- that this is all a stunt to attract negative reactions, which he can view personally while hiding them from the public, thus reaping a troll's reward while maintaining the illusion that he's sincere.

Back in 2006, Jeffries spammed FireflyFans.net with posts like this one: "well good luck also if you need extrass you can use some ppl i know that whould help for free.. www.ejsfilms.tk. try them if your looking for other voices and pics of ppl too. Lets see if this works hay and then maybe someone big like ejsfilms will take it over and develop a game." The spelling mistakes, the "someone big" self-aggrandizement -- common tools of the troll, BUT trolls simply caricature actual posts, and maybe this is an unironic perpetuator of those traits, one of the best/worst of his breed.

Jeffries has a band, called The Stars of Orion. When you click on one of their videos, it sounds like you simultaneously opened three other browser windows, all of which are playing slightly different horrible songs. He strums randomly and warbles "we must fight for freedom or else we die," accompanied by unrelated drum thumps.

Maybe Jeffries is just taking the piss. But he's put in a lot of effort to create something so perfectly wretched, and the Internet hasn't really acknowledged him one way or the other. So while I don't usually like to feature Awful Links that might be awful on purpose, I'll make an exception for EJ, in hopes that this really is some legendary holy grail of shit.

UPDATE: I have been thoroughly persuaded that Jeffries' endeavors are genuine. Congratulations, and condolences.

- Andrew "Garbage Day" Miller