Ahh, the art of MSTing. But... what exactly is it?

In my own words, MSTing is a Godsend. It is to writing as Mystery Science Theater: 3000 is to television.

(from the FAQ) Like most television shows, a dedicated fan base formed around MST3K; and as always, people started writing fanfics about it. However, while there are a handful of fanfics related [to] the adventures of Joel or Mike or whomever, most of the fanfics relating to MST3K have been in the form of 'mistings' (see below). As more and more people became interested in writing these 'mistings', a group of writers pulled together to create an unoffical forum for organizing the way mistings were produced and distributed. This forum is affectionality known as "Mystery USENET Theater 3000", or MUT3K for short. [Or, as I refer to them, Mystery Fanfic Theater: 3000]

As there are hundreds if not thousands of bad movies out there that Joel/Mike and the bots are forced to watch, there are thousands if not millions of bad USENET posts, from bad fanfiction to net.kooks to advertising spams to out-and-out flames. These posts to USENET have provided the authors of MUT3K many an hour of pain and torture in reading them, and in order to alleviate that pain, the authors did what Joel/Mike and the bots did - riffed the article to shreds. [. . .] Nowadays, with the profileration of the World Wide Web and other media, not only are USENET articles valid game for 'mistings', but so are web pages, email spams, junk mail brochures, movie scripts, and music videos - nearly anything that can't be done on the real show because of the limitations in the media.

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