Yeah! Girls! Stuff! Facts! More stuff! Girls. Football. Mint gear. Yeah! Phwoar. Girls! We’re having a laugh, eh?! FACT!

Communicate is glad, very glad, that it isn’t a lads magazine. We don’t have to pretend we have nothing but dumb, generalized, cliché-ridden things to say [we do it for real. Ed]. Not for us the insulting lumping together of all mankind as simple, woman-obsessed, football mad half-literates.

Sadly the same cannot be said of Rex.ae. This is the new “men’s lifestyle” Web site in the Middle East. Except it is not really men’s lifestyle. It is lad’s mag. And, like the majority of lad’s mag efforts, it follows the FHM model almost to the letter.

Tasked with developing a men’s Web site, Rex has failed to demonstrate the imagination or wit to steer clear of any of the following: a section called “Stuff we want,” (© Zoo Magazine, circa 2005), a section called simply “Girls,” (© FHM Magazine, circa 1998), stories with barely any reference to this region included because they mention football, polls with subjects such as “What’s the most shawarmas you’ve eaten in one sitting? Honestly, now.” And much, much more besides.

Yes it’s a tried, tested and often very successful formula. But Rex has a couple of problems. Firstly, it’s online. That immediately opens it up to vastly superior, vastly better-financed alternatives (FHM.com, Zootoday.com, Nuts.co.uk). Why should anyone visit Rex when FHM.com is just a click away? The answer is they probably wont, and definitely shouldn’t.

Secondly, Rex is hampered by cultural considerations. The accepted morality of the region does not lend itself to lad’s mag content. No sex confessions, no topless girls, no lingerie special. This constraint on content could have been a huge opportunity, inviting intelligent and insightful articles for men. Or the void could have been filled by witty and irreverent comment. Instead we get none of this, just a lame half-way house of a lad’s mag.

And the execution is just not there, either. It’s brand new but it looks dated, and unfortunately not in a artful, keenly observed retro sense. It’s clunky, unattractive and cheap looking. Like it’s ten years late to the party.

The only real saving grace of this Web site is the section “Web.” This offers a merciful escape to other parts of the Internet – to sites with purpose and some intelligent humor or entertainment value. That value is often fleeting, but at least it’s vaguely fulfilling.

But perhaps we are being a bit harsh on old – sorry, new – Rex. If the target audience for the site is teenagers they might be right on the money, and maybe they’ll get somewhere chasing that elusive young male market. Though we have yet to be persuaded that any teenage males get far beyond social networks and games. One day someone is going to have to admit that teenagers aren’t consuming online, they’re just playing.

And the sites authors are evidently having fun. Communicate estimates that running Rex demands less than thirty minutes a day at most, so the rest of their day is presumably spent freelancing for a more worthwhile title, or sunbathing. If you want some evidence, one “story” on the site features the title: “Is this the most boring book ever?” The content reveals that the author was working from home at the time, picked up his housemate’s Quantity Surveying textbook, took a picture, wrote fifty words (summed up by the title), and then, we guess, went back to sleep. It’s a cushy number, no doubt about it… perhaps Communicate is jealous?

No, not really. Upset more like. The struggle to adequately evolve Internet content and monetize it in a sophisticated way continues for many working online and across our own industry, and it is still unclear whether they will fully succeed. Sites like Rex set these lofty ambitions back, they insult intelligent men, and they attempt to profit at the expense of other, more deserving initiatives.