Websnark

Websnark refers to the website Websnark.com, and a webcomic review on the site. The site is a critical and popular culture commentary website and blog, and the reviews are known for increasing traffic to the site. It is in use mostly in webcomic circles, although its endurance is yet to be determined.

Websnark.com began in August 2004 by Eric A. Burns as his commentary blog, which quickly migrated towards a webcomics theme. Currently, it has two authors, the aforementioned Eric Burns, and Wednesday White, who joined the regular writing team in February 2005.

Although Eric has written reviews for and has a monthly column at Comixpedia, Websnark tends not to contain reviews of full comic runs, but will instead focus on the day's comic (often in the context of the strips preceding it). Site regulars refer to Websnark reviews as snarks, and the activity of writing them as snarking. Each snark is usually accompanied by a size-reduced thumbnail of the strip it is reviewing, and a link to said strip at the webcomic's archive page.

For the most part, the commentary in a given snark will center around particular elements of the strip that the commentator found noteworthy (whether good or bad); strips Eric finds particularly outstanding earn their creators "a tasty, tasty biscuit"—Websnark's equivalent of kudos or a gold star. (Wednesday has not to date dispensed biscuits.) In keeping with its blog format, occasionally the site will also feature some of Eric's novel-writing or webcomic projects, an essay, or a personal update.

The longest essays on the Websnark site are in the You Had Me And You Lost Me series. These essays detail the author's discovery of a particular webcomic and what they liked about it, how it grew and changed over the comic's run, and the point where the author eventually stopped reading it. A webcomic which is close to being lost is put on the "Why Do I Read This Webcomic, Again?" list.

Also included in the site's lexicon is the phrase Cerebus Syndrome—named after Dave Sim's Cerebus the Aardvark—which describes the scenario when a light, gag-a-day comic adds layer after layer of sophistication to its characters and set-up. Eventually, the strip comes to the point where the strip bears little resemblance to its roots and is the greater for it (on the web, the seminal example is Sluggy Freelance). There is also First and Ten Syndrome, named after an early HBO program which shifted directions abruptly between seasons, losing its old viewers and failing to attract new ones. The phrase describes when a comic does just that (or something similar), often the result of a failed attempt at Cerebus Syndrome.

The recent success of Websnark seems to have a number of roots: firstly, many find that the Websnark site is clean, accessible and has a personal voice. Secondly, many webcartoonists have reciprocated a link from Websnark, even if their comic was criticized. (Recently, the site has even begun to receive mention in advertising banners for particular webcomic strips.) Thirdly, Websnark occasionally dabbles in in-depth analysis, which probably kickstarted its success when an analysis of PvP was linked by Scott Kurtz, PvP's author.

The term snark did not originate with Websnark; rather, Websnark was named for the word already in use. According to The Urban Dictionary, snark is a contraction of "snide remark" (although in the Websnark sense, a snark is not necessarily snide). Some will point to the Lewis Carroll classic, The Hunting of the Snark, for the term's origin, but Carroll's snarks had very little to do with the sense in which the word is used today.