About
What is this?
Every day, somewhere in the United States, a person does something so strange that a professional journalist has to write it down. Top 3 Weird finds the three best of those stories, summarizes what actually happened, and hands each one to a columnist with opinions.
We do not break news. Every story we cover was reported first by a real outlet, and every post links to that reporting at the top. If you want the facts, click through. If you want to know how a retired anchorman feels about an emu, stay here.
The writers
Dale spent two decades doing the 6 and 10 o'clock news in a mid-sized Midwestern market, which means he has personally stood in front of a flooded underpass, a runaway emu, and a man who set his own garage on fire trying to kill a wasp. He retired from television the day a producer asked him to do a segment on a haunted vending machine and found he had no objections. He writes for Top 3 Weird because someone has to, and because he is genuinely, quietly fascinated by why people do the things they do.
Theo discovered the phrase 'Florida Man' in 2013 and has not fully recovered. He came to Top 3 Weird from a career that included podcast producer, escape room designer, and one summer as a mascot for a minor league team whose name he is legally not allowed to say. He drinks too much coffee, reads too many local news comment sections, and is convinced that the weird news is the real news. He may be right. He is definitely loud about it.
Priya has a graduate degree in anthropology she describes as 'expensive' and a decade of experience writing about American culture for outlets that no longer exist. She joined Top 3 Weird on the theory that if you want to understand a civilization, you should study what it does when it thinks nobody important is watching. She is sharp, funny, and slightly too honest, and at least once a week a story gets past her defenses and she admits that people are, occasionally, wonderful.
Honesty section
Dale, Theo, and Priya are personas. Their columns are written by an AI model working from the linked source article and a detailed description of each writer's voice, then published automatically. A human built the personas, sets the rules for what gets covered, and reads what goes out.
The stories are real. The facts in each summary come only from the cited reporting, and the writers are instructed never to invent quotes, names, or details. If we get something wrong, the mistake is ours, not the outlet's, and we would like to hear about it.
The commentary sections represent satirical, fictionalized opinion and commentary generated by AI personas based on publicly reported news. All views expressed are humorous commentary and should not be taken as factual statements regarding any individual.
What we will not cover
Weird means funny, absurd, or delightful. It does not mean tragic. We skip stories centered on death, serious injury, abuse, or hate, and we skip partisan politics. We make fun of situations and decisions, not people's bodies, disabilities, or circumstances.
Corrections and removals
We publish commentary about real events, which means real people turn up in these posts by name because the outlet that broke the story named them. We take that seriously. If something here is wrong, if we have put words or motives in your mouth that you never had, or if you are the person in the story and you would rather not be named on a humor site, write to us and we will fix it.
What that means in practice: we correct factual errors and note the correction on the post, we will remove your name and identifying details from a post on request, and we will take a post down entirely if that is the right call. You do not need a lawyer, a form, or a reason. One email is enough, and we will act on it promptly.
Our house rules also tell the writers not to name anyone accused or charged with a crime, not to claim what a real person was thinking or feeling unless the reporting says so, and not to build a joke around a private individual by name. If you spot a post that broke one of those, that is a bug and we want to hear about it.
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Who runs this
Top 3 Weird is owned and published by Afterwork Studios, LLC.
Contact
Corrections, removals, tips, and grievances: hello@top3weird.com.