What is it about the Internet, that it can unleash the uncanny problem-solving skills of even the stupidest people currently drawing oxygen? Further, how is it that the greatest communications and information exchange tool in the history of civilization seems equally incapable of channeling the results of this unprecedented analytical prowess to the very people who can most benefit from such remarkable and yet wholly untapped insight?
I know what you're asking: What the hell is Ward on about now?
This is what I've learned during the years I've spent traversing the Internet: No matter how complex or nuanced the problem -- be it economic issues, political turmoil, and/or societal ills of every color and stripe -- you name it, there's at least one anonymous pezhead posting in some isolated Internet chat room or on some equally far-flung message board who has ALL of the answers. To ask these people, any issue is as simple as sitting down and banging your knuckles against your keyboard for a few minutes, fueled perhaps by too many 12-packs of Mountain Dew, too many bags of Cheetos, and too little time spent bathing or interacting with other denizens of this planet in an honest-to-goodness face-to-face manner.
Never mind that the responsibility a lot of these people hold toward fellow members of their species has never extended beyond offering a courtesy flush while using a public restroom. They've never run a company, commanded troops in battle, held a public office, worked to cure a disease, write a law, treat a severely-injured or chronically-ill person, serve on a police force, or, in short, do anything which requires them to get off their fat asses, go into the world, and contribute to society or render toward their fellow human beings anything of any constructive or lasting value. The only thing such people seem to have going for them is legions of braindead followers sitting at their own keyboards and who shout "FUCK YEAH!" at everything these self-important blowhards say.
You know you're over the line when even Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly calls you out for the idiot you are.
In between the constant tirades about how everybody else is doing everything wrong, they boast about their high score on some video game, or how many DVDs they got for Christmas, or how they just got the secret inside scoop for some movie that won't be out for six months, or how they want to sue Burger King because they just busted the ass out of their favorite chair while binging on onion rings and watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the fifty-third consecutive day.
What never fails to make me wonder is: If these morons did in fact have all the answers, and enacting their grand plans was as simple and straightforward as they say it should be, then why the hell aren't they running the damned universe by now, rather than dwelling in the depths of some obscure online domain? Rather than harness their seemingly unparalled intellect for the greater good, they remain ensconced within their virtual, vaporous empire, holding vigil on the off chance one of the very people with whom they take fervent issue might stop by for some advice.
Riddle me that, if you please. I'll wait for the answer, but I suspect I'll have better luck convincing the waitress at my favorite restaurant that a threesome with me, her and her equally hot co-worker is a really, really awesome idea, and that my wife won't care -- not one damned bit.
Don't get me wrong: The list of people who deserve regular and continuous ass-kicking because of their quite-public and costly cock-ups is long and distinguished, be they government officials at any and every level and on either side of the political aisle, CEOs of corrupt corporations who screw their employees out of jobs and pensions, the jack-offs who devised the BCS scoring system, or whoever decided that ABC programs should end a minute later than normal so that they screw with my TiVo.
All I'm saying is that solving the big issues which plague us as a people aren't as easily remedied as a pack of overindulged Internet misfits would have us believe. As was once said in one of my favorite movies: "Serious problems require serious people." Let's put some of that brainpower toward crafting honest, real solutions, and then go out and do something about it, eh? Walk the walk, as they say.
Besides, if life were really that simple, I'd have had that threesome a dozen times over by now.
Shit.
And don't worry: I'm not calling for anyone to be silenced, censored, or even to just shut the hell up, get laid, and move on. The reading is far too amusing for it to end now. Besides, without such constant whining and ranting and sanctimonious bullshit (you know, the kind of stuff you're reading right this very second), the Internet would likely collapse in on itself, leaving us nothing but a tangled string of fiber optics through which we only could check our bank balances, read work-related e-Mail, and download the occasional low-quality and far-too short girl-on-girl porn clip.
Just thought it was worth pondering for a few minutes.
Hey. You. Gonna eat that bagel?
posted by Dayton Ward # 1:19 PM 
