Thus, the Internet was born. Fifteen minutes later, somebody composed the first horny email and sent it to the object of his desire, who muttered “Gross,” when she read it and then immediately deleted it.
That was the high point of the Net. It’s been all downhill since. Someday, when the world has descended into post-apocalyptic chaos, we will be able to entertain our half-wild offspring with tales of the vanished World Wide Web, stories about being able to exchange pictures of our meals and genitals at the speed of light. They will pretend to be interested, but behind our backs they will be making little hand gestures to their heads, indicating that they think we are screwy. We will notice these gestures and send them to pick bark off dead trees for food, half-hoping they get eaten by mutants. “Kids these days,” we’ll mutter.
And, of course, they won’t be any different than kids nowadays, or any of the other days since our hairy ancestors dropped out of the trees burning with the ambition of making their way to the top of the food chain. And we won’t be any different than any of the other old people that have ever lived long enough to be sick of their children.
Still, it’s something to look forward to—the Apocalypse, that is. Some people have been looking forward to it for years, and actually promising it to us. Some do it with Jesus involvement, and some do it straight up, but the End, which may involve outside objects like comets, asteroids or the doom planet Niburu, or may be an inside job, like nuclear holocaust or global warming or accidentally creating a black hole inside the Large Hadron Collider, which will suck up the whole earth into an object maybe as big as a ’72 Cadillac Deville, but with all its gravity intact, still being orbited by a bunch of paid-for satellites. That last one is my fave.
The point is (and I can hear you saying “Oh, there is one?”) that all of these suppositions, plus all the other accumulated knowledge of humanity, from making poison-frog arrows to building spaceships, is on the Net, where it can freely be ignored by everybody, or else be criticized inanely by people who haven’t figured out spell check.
All the rest of the Net is commentary, which is all some variation of I have a high opinion of myself, and a low opinion of somebody else, who could be you. Probably is you. All right, definitely is you.
There you have it. You’ve devoured the entire Internet. Now turn off your computer and go outside. That’s what I’m doing.
But if you want to leave a comment, I’ve got my phone with me.