Internet - Part the Seconde

Dear Internet,

As well as being an attack on you this is also an ode to print. Unquestionably, countless trees are felled and animals displaced to accommodate some appalling word salads masquerading as books, but in the interests of turning a profit, publishers must have an idiot filter in place. Internet, you provide no such thing. Clay Shirky, a General in the Army of the Republic of Obvious calls this absence of a filter “Mass Amateurization”, in his actual non-e-book. We prefer to call this process Mass Bacteria-like Cultivation of Self-publishing Wankers, but that’s just us.

For some strange reason, you have ingratiated yourself upon the majority of the Earth’s population as a tool through which to self-publish insipid blogs about things no one cares to read about. You seem to have forgotten, in your quest to become as necessary as air to humans, that the majority of humanity is unable to construct even a single coherent sentence, let alone an entire website worth of ruminations.

Take pause to appreciate how you have mothered the self-importance, vanity and narcissism of almost 2 billion people - most of whom probably shouldn’t be allowed to socialise without a minder let alone publish. Imagine the millions of ugly baby photos, political drivel, poetasters’ works and unqualified hateful critiques of irrelevant things that you house. 

It may seem to you that we should be targeting these bloggers, twitterers and tumblrers who utilize you, however we believe that the adage of targeting the disease rather than the symptom rings particularly true in this situation. You are an enabler of all that is wrong. In what situation do you think it would be helpful to read the unfortunate tortured poetry of a fourteen year old trustafarian? Or the daily musings of a newborn as told through the words of a modern stay-at-home mother armed only with a digital camera and three percent of her native lexicon? Or, God be merciful, anything on Facebook? That’s correct, Internet, the answer is never.

Occasionally, some curio attracts the attention of the challenged masses, and it goes viral. What people don’t realise is that this is not a metaphor. Justin Beiber, Rebecca Black and the Chapstick Girl are actual viri. Symptoms include speechlessness, nausea, headache and a strong desire to drop kick your computer into the next galaxy.

We threw our inaugural gauntlet at you Internet, many moons ago. Now we throw our 50^th at you in the hope that you will GO AWAY but also to celebrate our new look, which by the way is fabulous.

Adrik and Kyrani