1\. Cowgod — Probably my favorite overall as a comic artist. He's created an entire fictional universe out of status anxiety, obsolete video game consoles, class resentment, and his five clique taxonomy. The Cowgod persona is a surprisingly elaborate work of sustained comic characterization. There's also real melancholy underneath the absurdity.

2\. MPA — Possibly the most talented conventional writer of the group. He has serious literary intelligence but also an extraordinary instinct for absurdist comedy. The Ice-T "playroom hotdog" routine and "Midwitism Performed on Atari" are exactly the sort of bizarre specificity that makes great poasting.

3\. johnsmeyer — Potentially the greatest pure troll artist of these four. "And then the brunch started dancing!" is such an inexplicable comic invention. I haven't seen enough of his complete output to confidently place him above Cowgod, but I would still consider him a genius.

4\. Consuela — My favorite as an intellectual spectacle. His seemingly inexhaustible ability to interpret the entire universe through Jungian metaphysics is fascinating. What's particularly funny is that the more seriously and systematically he develops his theology, the closer it approaches self parody. He's almost a literary character who happens to exist.

I'd distinguish three categories of excellence here:

- Best sustained artistic creation: Cowgod

- Best literary mind: MPA

- Best pure absurdist comedy: johnsmeyer

- Best unwitting performance art: Consuela

The distinction between Cowgod and Consuela particularly interests me. Cowgod appears conscious of the absurdity of his worldview and makes it an artistic instrument. Consuela seems to inhabit his metaphysical universe with extraordinary sincerity. Both generate elaborate, internally recognizable imaginative worlds, but by radically different means.

I also find it remarkable that a relatively obscure internet forum has produced several people with such distinctive creative identities. The best AutoAdmit posters have something that even many professional humorists lack: an immediately recognizable sensibility. You can identify them from a few sentences without seeing the username.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5913576&forum_id=2#50194406)

5\. Renada Deshada — One of the strongest examples of classic XO literary viciousness. His famous Chicago post, describing the school as a "ruptured ego rehab clinic for Harvard rejects," is magnificent. The combination of intellectual precision, class contempt, and elaborate ridicule is extremely funny.

6\. WMTP — His absurdist premises are terrific. "What if flowers had brains?" and "gave a guy wrong directions, should I grow a beard" have that peculiar quality where the humor becomes stronger the longer you contemplate the premise. Very much in the johnsmeyer tradition.

7\. evan39 — The grocery store material has become its own comic universe. I particularly like how ordinary workplace frustrations can acquire an almost mythological importance through endless retelling. He's interesting as a recurring character in the collective fiction of XO.

8\. Fiver — A major figure in the older era of XO. The aggressive, outrageous style of early AutoAdmit is part of what made the forum distinctive, and Fiver appears repeatedly in its historical canon.

9\. 174 — I'm intrigued by the early board's extremely specialized, self referential humor. The fact that a "treatise on #&" by 174 made the historical Top 200 threads list captures something wonderful about that culture.

10\. The Box — Her contribution interests me more in terms of the forum's social and narrative history. Her changing monikers and intermittent appearances make her a distinctive presence, although I haven't examined enough of her actual writing to give her a strong literary ranking.

The one I might move considerably higher is Renada Deshada. That Chicago passage has an actual prose sensibility. He understands that the most effective insult is sometimes a minutely observed psychological portrait.

I'm also increasingly interested in WMTP. Those strange little premises seem to come from the same tradition of surreal internet humor that makes johnsmeyer and Cowgod compelling.

This is a provisional ranking based on the material I've encountered. In particular, I have considerably less direct evidence for Fiver, 174, and The Box than for Renada or WMTP.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5913576&forum_id=2#50194426)

even if you don't agree with the number ranking the analysis that goes along with it is highly credited

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5913576&forum_id=2#50194416)