guff

My Impression of the Internet Sucking Sound

The most amazing thing I’ve come to realize at this end of almost a decade spent in near unbroken online excursioning, is that there is so mind-numbingly little out there on the Net, and the Web in particular, I’m able to consider myself impressed by or find of any use.

Oh sure, I can and do stumble across the occasional bright, shiny bauble that has enough spit polish and substance to capture my interest. It’s easy enough to be distracted and allow myself to be taken in by something, however brief and shallow the attention given it turns out to be. But in short time it’s forgotten, and only later am I reminded of the glossy piece of flint as I’m deprecating entries from my bookmarks. A swift key press later and it’s gone for good. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Statistically it’s the merest tiniest fraction — that’s a number only a few notches above the smallest calculable value in existence — that offer enough ace-high and serviceable matter to make it past the period of time it takes to click the Back button in a browser. If software developers made it harder to save bookmarks (and maybe they should), the number of URL endpoints worthy of the effort would make for an awfully short list.

What I’m saying here you’ve probably heard said in a thousand other ways by a thousand other netizens. Nothing original in this. But maybe I could have avoided taking you through the long way and laid it out in three simple words: the Internet sucks. Of course, I can go a bit further: it blows; it reeks; it’s the Bizzaro world version of the golden goose in egg laying production. If the Internet was a style of dress, it would be out of fashion and designers would be committing seppuku out of shame for inflicting it on the public. If it was a plane, it would have gone down in the Andes and we’d be feasting on the crew by now.

All this is not to say anyone is to blame, because then I’d have to put myself into that giant circle of accusation, having been if not an influential part of the Internet clockwork, at least a tiny functional cog in its mechanism. And this is not an attempt to initiate some lame crusade to improve the general interest and ambience of the Internet at large. I barely have enough time to do that with my own productions. And this most definitely is not a demand for the Internet to be shut down, torn up, and it’s component parts sent by rocket screaming into the Sun. I want a better Internet, but it’s not like I’m suggesting we step up and redo everything. “Game over — stick another quarter in to continue play.” I’m not that foolish. No, I’m just taking this chance to blow off some angst; to do a little rant and whine over what could have been, what is, what will be, and what we’re stuck with under any circumstance.

Honestly, I think I just need to spend more time out of doors.