I have fully embraced the world of the internet. I love the interwebs. I love the good, the bad, and the truly disgusting. No, I don’t want to read about your sexual exploits or look at your heinous wounds but I love that you feel okay with posting it. There are things I don’t like such as posting embarrassing or exploitative photos of others without permission or of course stuff that harms kids. It makes me a bit uncomfortable that you can find information on how to create bloody mayhem on the internet and other dangerous and damaging things. Truth is, though, the internet didn’t create any new problems, it just made the old bad things easier to do. So I open my arms and heart wide to the flawed dirty being that is the internet.
Trust me, the denizens of the internet are dirty, flawed, and sometimes nasty little shits. Trolls abound. Mostly these are sad little people who got picked last for teams one too many times and decided to take revenge by anonymously cutting down other people. Some people like the internet for pretending to be someone else and creating havoc for others. Mostly, though, the bad internet creatures are like me, well-meaning, over-sharing, self-righteous twits.
The internet proves the old saying: opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and they all smell bad.
Earlier in the week I was having a conversation with Tina that got me thinking about this. We were talking about a facebook post from a mutual friend. Neither of us remember what the post was about but she told me about a response that really got me thinking. She said someone replied “no one cares what you think until you prove that you do” or something along those lines. It is so true.
I have many different friends of many different religious beliefs, socio-economic standings, and sexual orientations. I have military friends, I have dirty hippie liberal friends. Most of my friends are raging nerds but I do have some non-nerdy facebook friends. My sister is the most normal person I know and she is my facebook friend. Most of the time my posts are fairly innocuous. I try not to swear too much. I try to keep my posts mostly non-political. I also try to show sensitivity to the various religious belief systems of my friends. Sometimes, though, I cannot help myself. I’m a blogger. We have many many opinions and we are conceited enough to write about them.
I can really only think of two that really got responses from a lot of people. One was my outrage about, well, everything Arizona seems to be doing politically. The other was my joy at the death of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” I am not going to go into my feelings on this more because you guys have smelled my opinion enough on those. The point is, people on both sides aired their opinions. I don’t believe I got any personal attacks and I think everyone stayed on topic. I actually thought it was pretty cool. Before I posted on the topics, no one cared the slightest bit how I felt about those topics. By posting about my opinions I opened myself up to having people disagree with me. I got lucky because everyone was civil. The simple fact of internet life is that whenever we post anything we open ourselves up to the opinions of others.
Tina taught me something. Mommies are the most cutthroat, self-righteous group out there. Tina Fey posted a bit of her book BossyPants and it was a prayer for her daughter. She wrote a few cuss words. The mommies brought out the switchblades for that. I have seen mommies tell other mommies that they are horrid for feeding their kids gluten and should have child protective services called on them. I personally think that any social worker would love to deal with a mommy who puts diaper cream on their child’s face and fed their child processed sugar over the kids that have been beaten, molested, and neglected.
The other self righteous group is nerds. They are actually awesome in how freaking nuts they are. Nerd rage is glorious whether it is about games, electronics, or popular culture. I have seen people revert to third grade name calling over Batman Comics and computer processors.
In my pondering I have not come up with much in the way of conclusions but I do know if I open my mouth I bring the hell fire upon myself. That is what I get for airing my asshole… er, opinion. Also, seriously people, try to be more polite to each other. When you are writing in response to something think about what your kindergarten teacher would tell you. Respect.
Geeks a Geeking