The Internet Amuses Me

That image there is the least graphic representation of a train wreck I could find. I didn’t want to use a real one and offend anyone.

Let me start by saying that I’ve been “online” since the late ’80s. Back when internet was dial-up, and you paid by the hour.  That’s to say that I’ve been around the block for many years, and am not some person in a third world country that just got a computer.

The longer I’ve been online, the easier (and more affordable) it’s become for anyone to get online.  Any by “anyone” I mean people who have less intelligence than I feel should be required to be online. Granted, “the internet isn’t a spelling bee”, or whatever other lame excuses these people use for not knowing the difference between their, they’re and there.  It’s just sad, and frankly a little appalling how uneducated some people can be.

Granted that there can be a difference between making a typo and simply not knowing which version of a word is correct, but c’mon.

I went through my Facebook wall the other day, and was viewing some of the “Friendships” that Facebook lets you peek into — you know where you can see various things that you’ve posted back and forth with a specific person.  It made me do some more digging into some folks that I have known for many years.  And what I found wasn’t impressive.

Not to single any one person out, but I went to a Technical high school.  That’s generally seen as a school where you learn a trade, and the focus isn’t on academia.  That doesn’t mean everyone that goes to a technical high school is a moron.  I went to one, and I feel I turned out pretty well, and somewhat above average in the intelligence pool.

What I found by digging into some friends from high school (I’m going to use the word friends loosely as the people I’m secretly referring to here weren’t really my friends — I didn’t have many of those back then. Still don’t, but this time voluntarily) was that many of them come across as being dumb.  Sure, people type on their phone and fat finger things.  People are in a rush to comment on something.  Whatever the excuse is, certain people just come across as dumb.

The prime examples I’ve seen are comments that have no punctuation.  Every time I see this, I flash back to seventh grade English class, where we watched Flowers for Algernon, wherein the “dumb” guy (who becomes really smart.  Come to think of it, it’s quite the great movie) is presented with a sentence:

that that is is that that is not is not

This a test of his intelligence.  It’s only when he’s “smart” he can decipher that the sentence makes no sense without punctuation.

For those following along at home, the sentence reads correctly when you punctuate it: That that is, is. That that is not, is not.

See what a difference two commas and a couple of periods can make?

I wish some of these people that I read comments or posts from every day remembered that movie as well as I did.  Perhaps they’d realize that not only do they come across as dumb, but also their posts and comments are almost unreadable.

Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a sweeping statement of the people I’m connected with on Facebook.  Most of my friends are quite intelligent, and actual people I wouldn’t ignore if I ran into them in a grocery store (which I’ve honestly done in the past).  It’s just amusing the things that you can find online when you look around.  I, apparently, find unintelligence amusing.

I’d include some other amusing things I’ve found online over the years here, probably some photos of funny things. But let’s face it, I’m lazy, and this post is already long enough.

2 Responses to “The Internet Amuses Me”
  1. Kerri February 14, 2013
    • Mike February 14, 2013

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