Elaborate 404 Page Is So Unfunny It’s Funny

“When a page on this website goes rogue — and a code 404 arises — we dispatch one of our teams to bring it back. Ideally they are able to salvage the missing page, but sometimes, if the page is truly lost, they have to take it out (resulting in the subsequent code 500 when the page gets taken down).”

In Spanish it’s vergüenza ajena, in German it’s called fremdshämen and plaatsvervangende schaamte in Dutch. What it is is second-hand embarrassment, and I just felt it, after being linked to this overly elaborate 404 page from startup Nosh. The “humorous” video, which simulates some kind of web hipster recconnaisance mission for a “rogue” web page is one of the most vergüenza ajena – inducing things I’ve ever seen.  I am actually laughing at how unfunny it is.

Sure, I’ll give the Nosh boys props for originality — At least they didn’t copy Groupon’s Unsubscribe page … But honestly startup dudes, isn’t your time better spent in the office making sure the Nosh site doesn’t crash instead of out in a field pretending to kill a silly replica web page in order to come up with a “creative” 404 page.

And besides, how many people are using Nosh frequently enough that they’d get to the page in the first place!?

Okay some of you may think this is THE BEST 404 PAGE EVAR OMGGruber. But seriously Internet, I dare you to name one geniunely LOL-worthy moment in the entire wet noodle of an attempt at humor. Name one.

Oh well, at least it’s not this.