The Three Rs is a primarily British viral entertainment site, with standings in many niche interests and involved in a variety of different groups. Topics range from gaming to adulthood to the latest fashion.
Advertisements Want to advertise with The Three Rs? E-mail SConstantine@TheThreeRs.co.uk or see this post for more info. [No longer applicable folks! See the post below for more details!]
The Three Rs began activity on October 6th, 2006 and closed its doors on October 18th, 2009 - more than three years later. Shortly after first starting, the blog gained international acclaim for its coverage of Lost and videogames. In more recent times, the site maintained its popularity by hosting independent film and music coverage. This site now stands as a testament to all the hard work invested by our designers and many contributors. We wish everyone who has participated in this blog's history the very best of luck in life.
You are welcome to still read our content - either by taking a look at the archives via the top and left toolbars, or scrolling down for some of our most notable posts.
This has been The Three Rs: Reviews, Rants and Randomness. Goodnight!
Although this is our 999th post, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone and anyone who has contributed or helped out with this blog, either in the past or the present. This means our 1000th post can be both a big celebration and provided a platform for us to go, 'HEY, WE DON'T UPDATE ANY MORE BUT FEEL FREE TO TRAWL THROUGH OUR ARCHIVES'. Hopefully this entry won't turn out like Halle Berry's Catwoman Oscar speech.
Firstly, thanks to Craig for investing like, a tenner with us all those years ago. That allowed us to buy a decent domain and attract both a new audience and advertisers. Money well spent.
Cheers to all those people who have linked us on their blogs, sites and YouTube pages in the past. Special thanks go to both ABC and WoW Wiki for their constant help at driving traffic here, whatever the reason.
Thanks to Blogger for over three years of wonderful, free service. Kudos go to Dee, Sam (Jesus2nd) and Martin (Nephthus) for coming together and making such a professional-looking site.
Our gratitude goes out to Thought Bubble for letting us cover them last year. More thanks go to all those folks there who sent us stuff in the week after to review.
On a related note, thanks to the press office over at The Asylum for being so kind to us and letting Thor see your films once in a while.
Huge fist-bumps go to everyone who has posted on this blog. Primarily this goes to our current active staff (Thor, Oddy and I - Melaisis) but also to about a hundred other names too. These include (but are not limited to) Dee (Dee4leeds), Sam (Jesus2nd), Nicola (Nicolaaaxo), Candice (Faith ._. Love), Morty (Hashpipe of Doom), Raihan, Josh (Reload92), Jake (DW), Rafael (Unleashed11), David Thomas, Rawson (Ares), Ste (Prodigy), Jordan (Wombatlord) and the hundreds of one-post guest writers we've seen throughout the years.
In addition, cheers to both Reload and DW for their upkeep of DW-Gaming and Attention All Friends (although we didn't have influence over the latter) back in the day.
Cheers to Curio for porting most of my old blog's (En Masse) posts over to The Three Rs manually. That's a hugely boring task for anyone to undertake, but she handled it really well.
Thanks to all those sites we've pulled news and bits of articles from - especially Kotaku and Lostpedia.
Merci beaucoup to anyone we've sourced images from in the past.
Finally, thanks to you - the viewer. Some of you have stuck with us all the way through The Three Rs' evolution, while others only have just discovered this blog. We always appreciate feedback and some of you have certainly not been hesitant in delivering it to us. We've had readers from all over the world and hopefully you've enjoyed reading The Three Rs as much as we did writing it.
In the past I've barked about everything from the communities around videogames to plugging bands that were relatively unknown of at the time. Most of all though, I posted a lot of videos. Embedding videos into posts serves as the best way to cure writer's block, and that's something I had a lot. As such, I've compiled a list of my favourite videos to be ever posted on this blog. Some were found by myself, others discovered by the rest of the staff. Enjoy!
Dating back to April 28th, 2008. Dee posted this video quite pointlessly, possibly as a way to fill up space and get the blog going again. The video was apparently so bad that it has now been 'removed by the user'. Ouch. I can't even remember what it was about.
Did you know there was a time when YouTube's greatest comedy act 'Smosh' were relatively unknown? Neither did I. We caught onto Smosh's popularity early and still keep updated on their activities to this very day. Their music video about a man with a box for a head exemplifies the originality put out by Anthony and Ian, which is why it got featured all the way back in May 2008.
This is in the top ten because of two key reasons: 1. It's an awesome example of my capacity to stumble upon completely random new things. 2. I like both musicals and footage from Batman Forever. Read the linked post and the video page for more details.
Click on the post full a full explanation. Its basically a great little Team Fortress 2 parody. Unfortunately, its since been removed due to a 'terms of use violation'. What the buggery?!
Any parody of Billy Joel's classic 'We Didn't Start The Fire' is a hit with me, but this one proved to be especially good. As Reload says in the comments, 'This is what the internet is truly like.'
Another song parody, this time of Rick Astley's (Ashley's?) infamous 'Never Gonna Give You Up'. Its by the WoW Radio boys and basically describes my experience playing the game at 60/70/80.
We've always been about showcasing new bands to you guys here on The Three Rs and New Music Wednesday was made for entirely that purpose. While many of the bands we've featured have gone on to find fame and fortune, some remain strangely unknown. Take Natalie Portman's Shaved Head (yes, that's the band's name) as an example. As the video below shows: These guys are full of spunk, but never seem to have taken off. God knows why not, especially with a lead singer that hot. I could swear the video has actually gotten longer since my last viewing of it, too.
I should really mention that this list is in no particular order and I really just wanted to exhibit some of our funnier finds over the years. We finish today with a post originating all the way back from 2007. Its author is a name many of you will fail to recognise. Wombatlord was one of the 'big three' creators of The Three Rs and provided us with a few independent band plugs. One of these bands happened to be 'Mr. Hudson And The Library'. As in, the same Mr. Hudson who went on to work with Kanye West and produce a great album, 'Straight No Chaser'. This post was the closest this blog got to promoting new acts for the best part of two years and should be praised for it. The sole video in the post has been removed, but you can watch it here anyway.
That's all for now folks! Only two more posts to go before the big 1000!
I won't try to make this a 'Top ______' list, as I feel every one of these sites has something different to offer. Over the past three years of working with The Three Rs, we've been able to connect and work with multiple other sites from around the Internet. I know feel it's time to show our appreciation for such friends by recommending them to you. To keep things simple, I'll describe each one in three words. Other writers can add any links they want (for instance, Thor might wish to mention The Asylum).
In tribute to Wikipedia's 'Did you know...' section on their front page, I've compiled a short and completely random list of facts about The Three Rs in regards to our three years of activity. So, without further ado...
Did you know...
...The Three Rs was started on October 6th, 2006?
...the blog was originally called Reviews, Rants and a Redhead?
...before taking up 'The Three Rs' mantle, the blog was planned to be named something like, 'Lord Of The Periodical En Masse Rants', named after the three founding members' original blogs?
...two of those original blogs (my 'En Masse' and Dee4leeds' 'Periodical Rants') have since been incorporated into The Three Rs' archive?
...there was a time when our 'N3twork' bar at the top included links to dozens of our sideprojects? These were '3scapism' (a blog about videogames), 'Cultur3' (up-to-the-date music and current affairs news), 'Blog Alon3' (Lost-specific), R3cord (music-only) and our friends 'DW-Gaming'? Unfortunately, all of the above spin-off sites collapsed quite quickly, due to us needing time we didn't have to update them.
...this post was the first ever to be published on The Three Rs, although there's ones dating further back from that - from our older imported blogs? It was quickly followed by my 'opening rant' on how blogs should be run.
No! Of course you haven't! How do I know? Because if you did, you'd be over on it this very second, singing its praises. Its a 22,000-word, two-part parody of King Charles' Holy Bible. Instead of being set in the Middle East 2 thousand years ago, its about the creation and maintenance of the popular Internet forum, Gaia Online. Sounds incredibly corny, right? Well its packed full of humour, and the presence of art by some of DeviantArt's best talent makes it a tonne easier to read than the likes of The LOLCat Bible Translation. I put a lot of effort into writing it years ago, so many of you may enjoy seeing the fruit of my boredom.
As decided by our good old reliable Google Analytics account! This is judged on separate page views, so occasions like when ABC plugged our main site don't count. Unsurprisingly, the five are split between Dietrich and I. He takes away 3 of the most popular ones, while I only have two. Let's crack on!
Dating back from a time when we still used timestamps on our titles, Dee's mobisode commentary reigns supreme. Despite all the images now being broken and the mobisode being rated as 1/5, it remains our most popular individual post, ever. All the hits came from ABC, who thought we were some sort of Lost-special site. Maybe if we had been, things would have worked out differently... i.e, we'd be rolling in money.
All hope wasn't gone when Dee published this review, as both Digg and Wikipedia loved it. Its totally understandable, given the high standard of writing.
Everyone knows how popular World of Warcraft is, right? The success of this post is a testament to how some sly linking on WoW Wiki can make a blog popular. Heck, even my prediction about Yogg-Saron was right!
Further proof about the wonders WoW Wiki can make. It's possibly the most effort I've ever put into a post, as I had to take all the screenshots for myself in-game, before uploading them to Blogger. I'm really proud of it though and it has a place on my blogging CV.
Despite hardly any of the wishlist actually coming true, this post has remained popular - even after the launch of the game. Its the only post to date which has gotten so popular through basically Google searches alone.
Thor was on The Asylum's press list before you ever heard of 'em, favouring the film studio due to their tendency to release corny 'mockbusters', ripping off titles that had just been released in the cinema. Mega Shark... was different, being an original title which combined the best elements from Jaws and Clash of the Titans. Thor published his review back in May, a full two months before any other press establishment in the UK caught on to the potential of the film. It therefore comes as no surprise that the majority of our hits stemmed from IMDB.
Hey guys. Another list today, because everyone loves how easy lists are to read! As we quickly approach our thousandth (and possibly last ever) post, I thought I'd share some knowledge I wish I woulda known and employed when first contributing to this blog.
1. Image 'Alt' Tags
This is something I still fail to do. Basically, every image uploaded to the blog should have an accompanying 'alt' tag, which describes the picture. Why? It increases the chances that it'll get picked up by the many image searches on the Internet, and therefore boost view counts of the site.
2. The Value Of Search Engine Optimisation
Although this kinda ties into the first point, its always important to realise the importance of getting shown up on a search engine. This ranges from appropriate post titles, to linking to other parts of the site from the past. It also makes the place a damn sight easier to navigate around too.
3. Should Have Networked More
This blog almost has a thousand posts, but hardly any comments and not nearly enough views compared to other sites our age. There are multiple reasons for this, some of which are featured in this list. Moreover, our lack of marketing has really shown through towards the end. The main problem is that we only publicised what we cared about. For Dee, it was Lost. For me, it was World of Warcraft. For Thor, it was Asylum films. These three things made us popular, especially when we were willing to swallow our pride and plaster links back to the relevant posts everywhere. Unfortunately, Lost was only weekly, almost everything in WoW is covered by the bigger sites and the Asylum were occasionally skittish about sending us films. This is why we never stuck to one particular niche, but that meant we spent a lot of the time posting and no time publicising.
4. Selling Ads Is Essential
Advertising was always a strange topic with us. Anyone who had the gall to advertise with The Three Rs took a huge risk. Some days we didn't get any hits at all. Some days we got 55,000 views (thanks ABC!). If your product wasn't focused towards our audience, then you would lose out massively. That didn't mean we didn't try new ways to sell advertising, though. Although it ended with a nasty confrontation with a certain other site who were adverse to our methods, yet still advertises on 4chan and JJ.am [both not safe for work, folks!]. The point is that finding advertisers would have been easier if the blog had been niche-focused, but often I'd e-mail random companies with little more than a wordy way of saying 'er... hi? Wanna advertise on our site? Sorry for cold-calling. Peace!'. I have absolutely no idea how to sell ads in real life, but I'd really like to learn. I believe if the blog would have provided a constant stream of income, we all would have been more willing to post on a daily basis.
5. Update Frequently
Even with the whole 'Updated Daily' thing in our banner, the blog still failed to stop sporadically updating. Sometimes we'd have three posts in one day. Sometimes we'd have none. If a site fails to post new content on a regular basis, then it stops getting viewers. I think this became our major problem. There was a time where we had at least seven writers supposedly posting, but barely three wrote new material more than once a month. Motivating people is always a problem, especially if you can't pay them frequently.
Hopefully any aspiring bloggers will take these points and learn from them, just as we will.
Written by: Scott... well, The Three Rs Staff really.
The Three Rs was started years ago by myself, Dietrich and occasional contributor Jordan. We were young, reckless and this project was our first attempt at a blog on the 'net. It worked out quite well, sometimes reeling in thousands of hits per day. However, there were times when the awkwardness and inexperience of youth caught up with us, resulting in the posts below. Beware: Some are absolutely cringe-worthy.
Rhianna is a writer for some videogame franchises, each with varying degrees of popularity. In a not-so-recent interview, she turned around and said that writing was vital to the success of any game. I contested that with some examples of my own (Shadow of the Colossus, etc.). I didn't expect her to reply to my criticism in the comments section, though.
Following our attendance at the local comic convention Thought Bubble, we got a load of stuff to review from people there looking for press. The boys behind Ironwerkz were one such production house, so I handed Hashpipe a copy of the film to review. He slated it, which led to a shit-flinging contest in the comments.
Another post by Hashpipe, who isn't even a writer here any more. Again, it gains infamy due to the reaction in the comments. Who knew writing feminist comics with not-so-subtle feminist undertones could be such serious business?
Its like, an entire campus of French people singing along to 'I've Got A Feeling' by the Black Eyed Peas. Some parts look a little rough, but its still worth a look.
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