The Evolution of the Asshole

I don’t think people truly understand how amazing the internet is and how much it has changed our society.  I think that’s the way it is with new paradigms a lot of the time.  You don’t notice incremental change.  It’s the same with gaining or losing weight.  You don’t notice an ounce here or there but when you compare how your pants fit you can see the difference.  Fuck you pants for not changing with me.  You know how I said its me not you, well it is you.  Stupid pants.  Anyway, the internet has changed everything -  how we communicate, how we shop, how we learn, how we socialize, how we act like total assholes.  The internet has given new and unique tools to be jerks to other people.  When was the last time someone prank called you?  I got one a few years back waking me from a deep sleep about someone towing my car.  By the time the sleep had faded from my brain the little bastard on the other end must have been stifling laughter from coming out all of his orifices.  He called me for a few more days afterwards pretty regularly until he tired of harassing me.  I would usually pick up and immediately hang up so he didn’t get my voicemail.  But phone pranks are essentially a thing of the past.  Kids my age used to do it all the time.  Remember those idiots the Jerky Boys.  Now phone pranks are so stupid it resides only on radio.  Radio, now there’s an emerging market where they value culture and innovation.  (sarcasm).  Maybe it works better with italics and parentheses.  The old pranks are out now.  Just like phone pranks replaced whatever stupid nonsense annoying kids did before to terrorize other people.  If you are one of those delusional people who think children are angels you obviously don’t remember middle school or being a kid in general.  Kids are just like adults in their capacity for generosity and/or cruelty.  They are just a lot more stupid and they lack the experience to stop themselves from bad ideas.  I know playing with fire is bad not just because fire hurts but because I’m old enough to have seen people do really stupid shit with fire.  Like, you know, burn themselves.  I have some knowledge and experience backing me up to make a decision to not play with fire.  The internet however enables everyone an opportunity to act like an idiot.  And not simply for those times where we can act anonymously.  Being an asshole due to the power of anonymity of nothing new.  Let me share a few new trends of asshatery with you.  Asshatery is Latin for “he who is sartorially dyslexic.”

I read the term vague booking and I immediately thought of several people who clog up Facebook with vapid attention seeking posts.  And these are often lovely not at all obnoxious people but who, for reasons unknown, when in front of a computer have to post the most inane bullshit imaginable on Facebook.  I think it may be one of the more obnoxious trends in Facebook and that is saying a lot.  I think I might prefer being forced to slowly flip though a bad photo album of ugly overweight preteens posing on front of the mirror taking downward jaunty angled photos in black and white.  Angles can only do so much, you horrifying manatee.  Go away from my Facebook lurking I’m busy spying on my friends posts without actually communicating with them.  *Note* I have nothing against ugly or fat people but please either stop photographing yourself in a way that tries to hide reality or at least try not to the same fucking photo as every other oversensitive girl.  Skinny bitches are even more annoying on Facebook.  With duckfaces and crappy gang signs and commenting that 'you look terrible' in a picture where you have carefully distressed your hair and spent ten minutes setting up the lighting and the shot.  I want to reach through the internet and slap you.  But that would be wrong.  Mindblowingly awesome but wrong.  Also a poor use for the best new superpower not yet made into a comic book.  The Web Slapper: justice is anonymous.  You’re welcome Marvel.

Let me explain vague booking as I realized I went into full mini rant.  I can’t quite remember where I grabbed this quote, it could be from Cracked or Reddit or off any number of internet sites I frequent. 

“Vague-booking. Otherwise known as the “comment-seekers,” these Facebook friends post purposefully vague/sad updates for the sole purpose of eliciting a response. It’s usually something along the lines of “OMG. This is the WORST thing that could possibly happen.” Then within minutes there are twenty comments. “What’s wrong?” “Are you okay? “Call me.” And the Vague-booker strikes again.”

If you have more than few Facebook friends you now this new kind of asshole.  You could do the same kind of thing with the old instant messenger away message but people only seem to use instant messenger if you’re at work and they don’t block it.  These jerks never explain what’s wrong.  Even when they get seventeen comments.  They want you to call them.  You know what I do when I need someone to call me because I’m having an issue?  If you say 'pick up the phone' congratulations you are not a vague booker.  If you are a vague booker and you knew the answer that makes you even more awful as you understand how petty this shit it is.  The first few times I saw vague booking I showed legitimate concern because I wasn’t yet jaded and my empathy dictated an emotional response.  However, I shortly found out about this phenomenon and my empathy has since been replaced with fine layer of cynicism and lean muscle.  Yes, a layer of fat would be funnier but its altogether untrue.

Another quick Facebook gripe.  You ever notice how the people who friend you a little too quickly on Facebook after meeting once and probably never again are always the ones who post way too much.  Fuck those people for trying to be social.

Plagiarism and lying is nothing new.  But the internet seems to increase people’s ability for both.  I’ve only met one compulsive liar.  The amount of damage this one asshole can do to a single social circle is amazing.  However the compulsive liar is always eventually caught and they have to move on to the new circle of friends.  People like that are why I am overcritical and careful with who I spend large quantities of time with.  Does this make me a curmudgeon?  Undoubtedly, that and the intentional use of the word curmudgeon.  They would hand out badges to the newly initiated but no one in the inner circle wants to meet new people or shake hands.  The issue with plagiarism on the internet is stealing comedic items mostly; taking a joke, a picture, or a story and claiming it as your own.  It is so easy to access such an unbelievable amount of stuff and pass off as your own.  I would call it knowledge not stuff but with 50% of the internet being porn and memes I just can’t in good conscious do so.  The problem here, besides pretending to be something you are not, is you are affecting someone else’s work.  It is so easy to copy a link.

The other bit that really aggravates me is the disappearances of spelling and sentence structure.  Grammar Nazi’s are annoying.  They pick apart things just for the sake of being jerks.  They don’t do it to educate or be helpful.  They do it because they time on their what with not being legally able to climb inside their own assholes as so many of us wish they would.  I have receive texts from a fifty year old that read like a collection of spilled alphabet soup.  I can understand kids not spelling; that isn’t acceptable but it’s understandable.  Why are older adults commiserating in this nonsense?  The letter 'u' is not a word.  I swear to various things I hold Holy if they come out with a scrabble for the internet generation with 733t speech and bad lol speak I will slap a kitten.  I won’t but I’ll be mad.  And all manner of curmudgeony.

This may seem foreign to you guys but people used to communicate exclusively through long eloquent letters.  The immediacy and instant gratification of interaction is in some respect raping our language.  I wonder if the great literary minds of the past would have fallen prey to this as well.

"2 B or not 2b.  That’s the ??? lol roflmao!!!!  I r grate writer dood!!!"

That physically hurt me to write.

While I’m still bitching here is a quick list of things I dislike on the internet:

• Stupid quiz results.  I don’t care how your scored on some bullshit internet quiz.
• Links that force me register or install an app before I can get to the content.  Fuck you I want to read your story.  You get ad revenue by me coming to you page don’t make it more annoying for me to get there.
• Pop ups and interactive ads, especially ones where it’s hard to click the x.  Fuck you for making an annoying ad that goes across the screen.  A fuck you site owners for allowing that shit on there.
• Internet Exploder in general.  This especially irks me with helping out at the support desk at work.  Nothing will force you to jaded cynicism faster than customer support.
• Really shitty site design.  Fuck that its 2012 you don’t have an excuse for this anymore.  If I have a bottle of scotch and a few hours to read up on it I could code a page that doesn’t make me want to remove my eyeballs and replace them with inert facsimiles so I never have to look upon your disaster again.
• People ragging on one set off users while proclaiming their own set as better.  (Digg, Reddit, 4chan, etc.)
• Not having a mobile site.  Again its 2012.
• People who say ‘the cloud’ without an inkling of understanding.  Conversely people who talk about the cloud and do understand but do so arrogantly and condescendingly.

That should cover a fraction of the new evolutionary forms of the modern asshole.  Sometimes I wish I could quit you internet.

Ben