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MAXIMUM CONFUSION | PAGE 2 OF 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Maxim heavily promotes its Web site in its magazine, and according to the Maxim webmaster, it lures nearly 60,000 people a week to the site -- most of whom come to ogle the revealing outtakes from photo spreads of their half-naked, Playboy bunny turned "Baywatch" star cover models. Many of those visitors, it seems, haven't mastered their spelling, and end up at Maxi instead. And though a typo is certainly no crime, it's mind-boggling that so many of them get all the way through our site -- clicking past features like "Chick Streaks: Hair mascara for the masses" and "Underwired: Where are all the women in technology?" -- and still can't figure out that Maxi is not Maxim. Many of Maxim's readers wind up in our forums. The chatter of our girlish fans is often interrupted by these kinds of posts: "I enjoy Maxi very much. It is nice to see a magazine that one, is geared towards machismo in its truest form. Two, is not afraid to call a 'spade-a-spade' and three doesn't take itself too seriously ... What a stellar choice of babes!! Maxim is to be commended. Can I make a suggestion that Ashley Judd be given consideration for an upcoming issue -- that's talent!!" Or, from a pithy poster who calls himself "Lite Coors": "I think you should rename ur magazine to MAXIM-The Health mag. I have never laughed so much ... you know, genuine rip-roaring chuckles from the insides of my gut. I am a health junkie ... take my daily vitamin cocktail, believe in condoms-else-ur-history theory ... you get my drift, ya? MAX ... you are it!!" We get confused e-mails from misplaced Maxim fans who can't figure out why they can't find that free CD advertised in the magazine, congratulating us on the "hot birds" we put on our cover and even begging us for jobs: "I am writing to inquire about possible job opportunities with your publication ... Let me explain why you should snatch me up before someone else does. First of all, I have lived in that bastion of masculinity -- the college fraternity house -- for four grueling years. I promise the scent of piss and beer has not permanently attached itself to me and your office will not lose its own familiar smell. This semi-communal living has left me with vast caches of obscure knowledge which I would be happy to impart to your readers. I graduate May 23 with a bachelor's degree in Beer Science, err I mean Political Science. Better schedule an interview with me fast." When their mistakes are pointed out, most mis-routed Maxim fans disappear without a backward glance or apologetic e-mail. Some, however, are persistent. It took one would-be contributor five e-mails before he was convinced that no, Maxi wasn't Maxim, and no, he could not send e-mail to http://www.maximmag.com and no, we weren't interested in publishing his story about "OLD RIP, the horned toad that stayed alive for more than 30 years in the cornerstone of the new courthouse in Eastland, Texas." A personal favorite is a contest Maxim holds in its magazine. Maxim supplies a photo; the readers supply the captions; we, of course, receive the e-mails. What are we to suppose about the picture that goes with reader captions like "Coming to a theater near you, REVENGE OF THE IMPLANT" or "Chicks N' Salsa"? This is not to say that Maxi doesn't have its own subclass of confused readers -- because according to Charles Coxe, an editor at Maxim, maximmag.com also gets a healthy number of misplaced Maxi readers and correspondingly confused e-mails. Many of the e-mails Maxim gets from Maxi readers are from irate feminists, who were shocked -- shocked! -- to happen upon such a bastion of male sexuality. As Coxe recently laughed to me, "I got one e-mail that equated us to the spawn of Satan -- she saw a picture of a scantily clad woman and went nuts." Coxe also gets e-mail from shaken-up Maxim readers after they accidentally land at Maxi. Some, he says, call Maxi "ultra-militant lesbian feminists" (guess they were scared off by our parody of Lifetime TV), and others tell him that Maxim should put a warning up on its site that would relate the dangers of mis-typing that URL. As one Maxim reader wrote to Coxe: "Just want to tell ya I Love your mag. Just checked out your Web site, and about had a shit-fit. Whatever you do, don't ever type 'maximag.com' with only 1 'm.' It appears to be some femanist website trying to take advantage of those of us who can't spell correctly. I didn't get into it too deep, it kinda scared me!!" The irony of it all is that the editors of Maxi and Maxim get along just fine. Sure, I loathe much of the content they produce. But the Maxim editors certainly have a sense of humor about what they do -- and cheerfully admit that their readers can be frightening. Certainly Maxi and Maxim aren't alone in our accidental fraternizing -- the abundance of online typos has spawned an entire online cottage industry. And the Mojave of simple URLs has been a long lament of Web magazines who've had to resort to that burdensome "mag" moniker (or the even more laborious "magazine"), becoming the harder-to-find "Feedmag," "Cosmomag," or in our case, "Maximag." How many readers has Salon lost to the "cyber community of Salon professionals" that reside at salon.com? At Maxi, we've always resented the Maxi Poultry Company of Quebec for both getting to our rightful domain name before we did and then not even bothering to launch a Web site. But with a million new Web sites blooming every week, the problem is just going to get worse -- so we might as well sit back and enjoy the chaos. In fact, isn't the confusion of the Web half its fun? That your visit to the New York New Media Association Web page might be hijacked by its satirical opponent? That a trip to your friendly neighborhood search engine might accidentally land you with a Pamela Anderson Lee video? The Net is a most random universe, and the occasional surprise that comes from a mistyped URL can even be an eye-opening experience. So sure, a number of those misdirected Maxim readers may think that Maxi is a passel of militant lesbian feminazis -- but perhaps just a few are being enlightened. We may even convert a few beer-swilling frat boys to our feminist ways. Then again, perhaps that may be expecting too much.
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