In November 2013, a Missouri State student was offended by a TFM article that argued that women with short hair are less attractive. At least she let me use her dad’s credit card. Other content published by Grandex has been criticized as racist, sexist, and classist.Īn early TFM one-liner might be interpreted as a joke about nonconsensual sex: “Had to buy plan B the next day because neither of us remembered the details of everything that went down after the bar. It's comedy and entertainment for 18- to 24-year-old males, so this type of content will always be a part of the TFM offering.' 'Raunchy comedy is definitely a part of the TFM brand, but that's not solely what defines the brand. 'The R-rated stuff accounts for a small minority of our overall traffic and content offering,' he says. He says it’s rare on Total Frat Move, most content being 'PG-13 and below.' Wickham says the sexually explicit material hardly appears on Total Sorority Move and Post Grad Problems. The headline: “Playboy Models Make Their Own ‘First Kiss’ Video, It’s Astoundingly Boner Provoking.” A recent lead story on Total Frat Move showed two women kissing. They all owe their success, at least in part, to a willingness to publish the sort of raunchy, politically questionable content their audience loves. Total Frat Move is one of several popular guy-oriented destinations that, along such sites as Barstool Sports, Guyism, and Brobible, target the demographic identified a few years previously by Tucker Max. Wickham says no single story put the site on the map instead, it was the collection of one-liners that got passed along. The growth was slow and steady, and, by December 2011, Total Frat Move reached 1 million monthly uniques. The Twitter stalking was enough to drum up a loyal following without guerrilla marketing or paid advertising. 'We started following people who fit the part,' Wickham says, 'not just any fraternity guy, but that southern, stereotypical fraternity guy who we thought had a high probability of sharing it with friends.' Wickham and Young scrolled through Twitter profiles and tried to identify the frattiest-looking avatars - guys sporting Vineyard Vines shirts and baseball caps. Its 140-character limit seemed like the perfect home for TFM's stream of one-liners.

While many media startups today grow on the back of Facebook, Total Frat Move and Grandex focused early marketing efforts on Twitter. Madison Wickham/TFM Ryan Young, a cofounder of Grandex, working from the original 500-square-foot office off South Congress Avenue. Please enable Javascript to watch this video I'm too frat and too rich to give a sh*t about nickels. 'If I had a nickel for every time I heard the phrase 'You’re an asshole' I wouldn't be any richer. 'A sick lax pinnie, khaki shorts, and sperrys is my required work from home dress code. Before long, the site also popularized NF (Not Frat) and GDI (God Damn Independents - students who aren’t members of Greek life).

The site allowed readers to post TFMs of their own, which they started doing immediately. Wickham designed and coded the site, which launched on June 1, 2010, with total upfront costs of $150 for hosting (although they later did rack up some credit-card debt). Young ditched his firefighter training and teamed up with Wickham to create a blog featuring fratty one-liners followed by their acronyms. “I thought it had promise,” Wickham says. That was it the whole idea was right there. Young had seen other acronyms - such as FML (F-k My Life) and TFLN (Texts From Last Night) - explode on the Internet.

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