Remember Fairfax’s plans for a totally gnarly website (codenamed Kwerky) aimed at “free-spending hedonists desperate to have their say”? Well it’s here and it’s even worse than I thought.

What those groundbreaking and envelope-pushing folk at Fairfax have done with The Vine is simply take the website template used for The Age and the SMH, change the background image, remove the political stories and replace them with more advertising masquerading as content.

“How is this going to attract those hedonists?” I hear you ask. Well, the uberfunky writers at The Vine say crazy and zany things like “Adelaide: so much more than murder and churches.” Oooooh, dark satire, mang!

And what’s a mainstream media outlet’s attempt at Web2.0 without a Web1.3 outcome? The Vine’s interactive interface starts and ends with a chance for readers to comment and some news stories presented as “blogs” (even though they’re clearly not blogs.)

Basically the whole site stinks of try-hard and pathetic. It’s a poorly built and conceived attempt to attract younger people to existing Fairfax advertising using pissweak graphic design and by paying lip service to social networking. It will decompose faster than a turd in the hot summer sun.

(Thanks to Damian for discovering the rebranded Kwerky that I’d spent weeks looking for.)