What makes a website useless
A useless website does one small thing, or nothing, and commits to it completely. There is no account to create, no feature list and no reason to come back except that it made you laugh.
They spread because they are easy to explain in one line. You send the link, the other person gets the joke in a few seconds, and they send it on.
The classics
Zombo.com, from the late 1990s, greets you with a voice promising that anything is possible and then does nothing at all. It became one of the internet's oldest running jokes about pages that are all welcome and no content.
Is It Christmas answers a single question with a single word. Most days the word is no.
Pointer Pointer, made by the Dutch studio Moniker, waits for you to stop moving the mouse and then shows a photo of a stranger pointing exactly at your cursor.
The Useless Web is a button that sends you to a random useless website, which makes it a directory of the whole genre.
When useless costs money
A smaller branch of the genre attaches a price to the joke. The Million Dollar Homepage sold a million pixels at a dollar each in 2005, and the page itself was the product.
I Am Rich went further in 2008: an iPhone app priced at $999.99 that showed a glowing red gem and nothing else, until Apple pulled it from the store. Both are remembered mostly because the price was the whole idea.
Why people love them
Most of the web wants your attention, your data or your money in exchange for something. A useless website asks for a few seconds and gives back a small, honest surprise. That contrast is the charm.
A useless website with a monthly fee
Forget Your Credit Card sits at the expensive end of the genre. You pick a monthly amount from $1 to $1,000, Stripe bills it, and confirmed payments count toward a public Lifetime board if you choose to appear.
There is no product, no reward and nothing coming back. It does nothing, on purpose, every month.