Go to MyLifeIsAverage.com and one will find hundreds of thousands of anecdotes from anonymous people. The slogan under the logo of the website reads, "Life is pretty normal today." After reading some of the first entries, one can conclude that life is indeed normal.
"Today, while watching National Treasure I realized that the good guys use Google while the bad guys use Yahoo!. You win again Google. MLIA" says one recent entry.
"Today, on the bus a kid was throwing Goldfish crackers at people. They kept hitting me in the head and it was annoying so I stood and turned to yell at him. When I started talking he threw one directly into my mouth. I was laughing too hard to yell at him. MLIA" reads another.
"Today, I was walking in my neighborhood when I heard someone running behind me. I turn around, only to see some teenagers dressed up as three different colored crayons yelling, ‘We’re free! We’re free!’ and an empty crayons box chasing after them. Try to picture this in your head. It made my day. MLIA" says a third anecdote.
People are drawn to the website in droves, as demonstrated by the countless entries submitted each day. In fact, according to a recent Wall Street Journal Q&A with the creators, MLIA has received more than 100,000 submissions in its short, popular life. When one looks at the Frequently Asked Questions page, the creators of the website give surly, sometimes witty answers to what could be commonly asked questions about the site. For instance, one of the FAQs says, "How come you guys don’t have a random stories option?" They answer sarcastically, "Because we are lazy and slow. We are working on [this], though." In general, the website presents itself as one giant inside joke, but high school and college students apparently are in on the joke given the site’s popularity.
"I think they’re appealing to high school [students] because it gives us something to do in the computer lab other than our work. Also, I think a lot of the posts on the websites come from people our age. It’s something that we can relate to or see happening to us which makes it worth reading and makes us laugh," says senior Erin McCarty.
MLIA is a sister website to a somewhat popular website known as MyLifeIsG.com, a website where good things that happen can be posted. But that website, ironically, is more mundane because the things that are posted are not funny, but more records of personal triumphs. It is evident that people like laughing at the expense of others, or having an outlet through which they can express anger, sadness or any other array of emotions. FMyLife.com is another popular website through which people can express bad things that happen to them.
The websites have an undeniable humor, emphasized by many people who entertain themselves via this site. "MLIA is really funny," says junior KC Emerson. "[But] FML is fake." She also posts on MLIA in a comical manner, submitting Pokémon references.
It is hard to forecast where it will be in the future, as websites of this nature are entirely new as the internet evolves rapidly. The quick movement of peoples’ interest has been demonstrated by fads on the internet such as MySpace and Friendster. As far as the creators are concerned, they are just happy that it was able to get off the ground. "[We] never expected so many people to get the joke," say Guru Khalsa and Enrico Mills, the founders of the websites, in a Wall Street Journal Q&A.
"I think they’re definitely just another quick Internet fad," says McCarty. "I mean, of course people still look at them after the original obsession of them [is over] but the popularity of them definitely wanes after a couple of months."
Whether the traffic on these websites will decrease can be disputed, however. "I think these websites appeal to high school [students because] they make us feel normal," says senior Nicole Hodges-Austin. "I think they could be a lasting trend. People are going to always have secrets and stories, aren’t they?"