The Bumper b3ta Book of Sick Jokes - Rob Manuel

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	Collection of the sickest jokes submitted by the public
Disadvantages:	Definitely not for the easily offended .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Founded by Rob Manuel, Cal Henderson and Denise Wilton the online community b3ta.com (pronounced beta to rhyme with Peter) is home to 10,000+ members who regularly post pictures they have made using tools such as Photoshop or Flash, funny stories or links to the funniest or wierdest sites on the internet.

Indeed b3ta states in it's FAQ that it is dedicated to celebrating the best stuff on the internet. The site is relatively uncensored humour driven by the members. In fact the only real censorship is anything that may be seen as pornographic which could get you fired from work, anything else is pretty much fair game.

Think of an email you may have received with a funny photoshopped picture (footballers holding handbags in a penalty line up, for instance) and nine times out of ten it originated on b3ta.

Each week Rob himself sends out an email to a mailing list of subscribers with the stuff that he has found or that has been submitted by members so that everyone can enjoy the best the internet has to offer. There are also weekly image challenges and questions that users respond to in their droves. Content can be hit or miss but the sheer volume of posts is staggering. The best image posts are upgraded to frontpage status by the mysterious 'mods' who police the site and these are often the ones emailed on to friends.

A couple of months ago one of the questions of the week was for readers to submit the sickest jokes they knew that they would like to share with the community. A few weeks later the image challenge refered back to these jokes and invited visitors to 'shop' (b3ta speak for image manipulation taken from name of Adobe's ubiquitous graphics package) these jokes for a series of images that Rob was hoping to use to illustrate a book containing the best jokes submitted.

This book ultimately appeared as the Bumper b3ta Book of Sick Jokes and is now available for sale.

I have to warn you at this point that some of these jokes are not for the easily offended. They cover most of the taboo subjects that we in polite society like to denounce strongly but who secretly laugh at them and tell in secret to our closest friends. The creators of the book are in fact the general public and have merely been compiled by Rob. The jokes come illustrated with images, again created by the b3ta community who are all credited for their work at the end of the book.

I would like to give examples of some of the jokes contained within the book but I don't want any negative feedback from this review so I have refrained from doing so. Some of the jokes I had heard before and some were cruder examples of older jokes given a more modern punchline and there were plenty of new jokes that I haven't heard until now.

No area of society is left untouched by the jokes in the book as subject matter covers things like race, celebrity, bodily functions and sexism right down to the more distasteful subject of misogony and paedophilia. Like I said at the start, this is not for the easily offended.

The one thing to bear in mind about this book is that it is a collection of modern humour and the langauge in it is strictly adults only. This is an ideal purchase for the open-minded person who doesn't easily get upset, for the more sensitive though I would steer clear. The book is nicely bound and professionally printed and the illustrations are clear throughout. It is divided up into various categories which keep jokes in a smiliar vein together. If you do start to panic and get upset they have kindly printed a picture on a nice fluffy kitten on page 168 with some tamer jokes.

Did I mention this isn't for the easily offended? I'll do it again just in case. For everyone else though this is worth a read, if anything to find out what the youth of today find funny.