See Ya, Fark

The Internet is all growed up. And has a porn addiction. And, for the most part, the mentality of a prepubescent ignoramus that would make Beavis and Butthead look like Rhodes scholars.

My latest evidence? The site Fark.com, which I will no longer visit because the juveniles have apparently taken over.

They won’t miss me, I’m sure. The feeling is mutual.

Read two comment threads today; the first on a column from a British newspaper concerning a mother’s discussion of pornography with her 11-year-old son, who exhibits a greater amount of maturity than the so-called adults (and aforementioned prepubescent ignoramuses) and the second on a brief video showing an Italian teenager being pulled from the tracks milliseconds before a train arrives – she’d gone onto the tracks to pick up her dropped cell phone.

The comments, well, are comment-y, even for the Internet. Moving from the “what’s wrong with porn”-fest to the second thread, where voyeurs were actively commenting on the girl’s stature rather than her actions – or the fact she survived left me cold. It used to be better, says the man with the onion tied to his belt. We self-censored a bit more. Well, a lot more, than we do now. I don’t know if it’s the anonymity of the Internet, or the fact that it’s always there now, or if these ignoramuses who lack the filter between what the brain thinks and what the mouth says (or the fingers type) have always been around, they’re just more visible now. (Well, I’m sure it’s about 95% of the latter, because, well, humans are humans after all.)

Guess What I'm saying is that the internet has gotten a lot more coarse than when I was fooling around with it back in the early 1990s.

Way back in 1993, as Scott Adams shows us, the Internet held this kind of connotation:

Now, well, it’s basically the same. But the seamy underbelly which would have had Dilbert and the other folks in this strip stark naked has surfaced, ready to talk about people as if they’re slabs of meat to be ogled and fondled and as if EVERYONE ELSE on the planet is going to agree with them. And then the same Internet turns around and tells us rape is bad. Very bad. Very, very bad.*

Can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding . . . 

Of course, it’s not the same internet. There’s the part where mostly decent folks hang out. Then there’s the part where the likes of Michael Brutsch hang out. Guess where I want to be?

Call me a prude. Please. Because that’s what I am. Watching my younger brother’s life self-destruct due to a pornography addiction – he’s lost his wife, his three children, and is currently serving a four-year prison sentence – will kind of make prudery seem like the more viable option.

*Which, of course, it is.