Humour Uncensored

The internet is filled with success stories. The only thing it has probably got more of is memes. They're not making the world any better, but people deserve a laugh, just like they deserve reassurance that their completely 100% original start-up idea will succeed. So here's another success story that also features memes, because why not.

Most people have heard of Rantages as the Facebook page everyone likes. While the page is certainly a large and important part of Rantages, it's not what it started out as. It is first and foremost a [crude] humour website featuring articles known for their confrontational style of writing and general lack of political correctness. Over the years, it has grown and become more of a hub of various original content with the website acting as the heart of it all.

The story of Rantages starts out like your typical young-adult novel – with an angsty teen who's angry at a lot of things. TehGoatLord started a WordPress blog back in 2008 when he was 14-years-old. It started off as a simple pet project of his where he uploaded programming tutorials and occasionally wrote random blog posts i.e. completely normal things an average 14-year-old does with his time. To his surprise though, people enjoyed the rants and at one point his friend Dan Nelson, who loved his work, offered to buy him a domain. Everything that Rantages has built up and become started from this. "It was actually an accident," TehGoatLord says. 

Up until then the blog was just called tehgoatlord.co.cc. He needed a name for the new website so naturally he made a new word by putting two different words together like all the cool companies did.

Rant + Rage = Rantages. There you go folks. The secret is out.

Speaking of names, a lot of people are curious about the goat motif and why this animal of all things became the mascot of the website and everything else Rantages related. Clearly these people are all stupid because goats are the coolest animals ever and should be everywhere. 

Rantages officially started on March 9, 2009 with two writers and Nameera Auree Ahmed, who pretty much taught TehGoatLord how to write, effectively being Rantages' first editor. During the relaunch phase mid-2013, Mathew Reid and Connor Fanning joined up as partners and as of now, Rantages has around a 100 people including writers, editors, a video crew, original content creators, advisors working for the website and has exponentially increased the amount and variety of content released compared to when it first started out. In the future, Rantages wants to establish itself as a hub for funny content creation. Sort of like an unholy mix of [the good side of] BuzzFeed and the journalistic quality and humour of Cracked.

The articles during the early days of the website ranged from cheeky jabs at some of the absurd social norms to full-blown scathing rants about how the world sucks. Needless to say, they were all immensely popular because everyone loves furiously nodding their heads in approval of controversial behaviour. This is why metal music is a thing. 

Soon these rants were all over the internet and were inspiring young aspiring writers to send in what they had to say about whatever they wanted to talk about. And the number of contributors grew. What Rantages was doing at the time was pretty unique. The articles weren't just about repetitive jokes and memes. They were about actual issues we had in Bangladesh and the things young people had to say about them in full, uncensored form. 

A recent article that gained much popularity was about the need for sex education in our schools. The writer of the article, TheHypocriteLord says, "We address the issues of sex education and social stereotyping through what we do best, making people laugh. The humour that we work with is much bigger than just making memes. Making you laugh is our secondary goal, we primarily want to point out certain social injustices. That's what Rantages is about."

Things were going really well at the time, until they weren't.

The website's servers crashed around November last year and all the previous articles were lost. Some indefinite hiatuses and an on-again-off-again thing with the website later, Rantages had lost a lot of the momentum it had accumulated. The writers had nothing and new articles weren't coming in. 

But the Facebook page picked up from that point, and Rantages came back stronger and even more popular on the back of its content creators. One such content creator is SaltyFish, who says, "Our OC team has several content creators, each with their own ideas and creative force. All of them capture the very essence of the Rantages humour – crude, sarcastic, ironic – but at the end of the day highlight the social reality of Bangladesh.

"The best part is people coming with all sorts of ideas and ways in which they can make a certain situation funnier than usual. I believe that sort of synergy is what makes content creation fun and unique in our case – everyone helps each other in making content better and funnier. Not only that, we have our own nicknames, and everyone helping in the creation of the meme gets credit. It gives our audience a more personal feel. After all, we are a community, and a relationship with fans is definitely important."

A website relaunch later, Rantages is creating content across the table - from articles, memes, infographics to even a skit show. Previous Rantages writers are working for some of the biggest print publications in the country. New writers are joining the team every other day and the standards for content are always going up. It's hard to believe it all started off as some 14-year-old's blog. So what is TehGoatLord doing now?

"I was on the bus once, going to work. This guy next to me was browsing the Rantages page and he was in fits of laughter. He was also taking 2/3 of my seat. I asked him to scoot a little and I was met with a scowl that clearly said 'I am busy browsing dank memes. I don't have time for you.'"