Those familiar with the history of the wonderful alternate reality we like to call the Internet already know the World Wide Web was created by the Department of Defense in the late 1970s in order to quickly and secretly transfer, from one part of the country to another, large amounts of porn.
This, of course, contrasts with Al Gore’s story of the origin of the Internet, which is that he created it entirely by himself; in his words, “After inventing the piano key necktie and before turning myself into a robot.”
With these conflicting historical accounts, I’m sure you are asking, “Will we ever know the true source of the Internet’s humble beginnings?”
My answer to that: probably, because roughly 400 people have written long, boring books on that very subject. But suppose you don’t really feel like reading a book — then what?
This is where blogs come in, not because it makes sense at this point in my column, but because they are pushy and overbearing. Haha, just kidding! Blogs are not women.
But blogs are, in a word, super-duper. For the uninformed “netizens” out there, the rise in the Internet’s popularity has led to the creation of a new type of journal, one in which all of your secret feelings and desires can be posted on the Internet for complete strangers to read over and over again, which is definitely not considered stalking at all.
Blogs have been the “hot new thang” for a year or two now, and while the media seems fascinated with the political pundit blogs that are updated approximately 70 times a day with boring intellectual insights, I find personal blogs much more fascinating, disturbing and mostly just creepy.
Content on a blog ranges from interesting personal stories of travel in foreign countries to a detailed description of what someone fed his or her 18 cats for dinner. If “overshare” doesn’t apply to blogs, perhaps “way too much information” does.
Think about it: When was the last time you thought to yourself, “I wonder if Brian from Tacoma extended his streak of days without showering to 84?”
If you thought to yourself, “Eighty-four days? That’s nothing!” then I recommend starting a blog and sharing your filth-filled journey with the rest of the world, although I must tell you one little thing first: no one cares.
That’s the ultimate secret to blogging — no one wants to read what you ate for lunch today, or that someone cut in front of you in line, or that you now have 14 Metallica tattoos instead of 13, or that your stupid band broke up again.
Still, my “research assistant” tells me, “Nearly one zillion blogs are created every day.” That’s coming from a plastic SpongeBob toy, by the way, so it must be right.
Just for the sake of people who may never have seen an actual blog before, and who are somehow incapable of using the Internet to find one (it’s impossible to take three virtual steps without running into a whole slew of them), I have come up with a painstakingly faithful re-creation of 99.9 percent of the so-called “live journals” out there:
DATE: “What does it even matter anymore?”
MOOD: “Depressed, downtrodden, miserable. Did I mention depressed?”
LISTENING TO: “Some sort of angst-filled, I-hate-the-world-and-everyone-in-it song.”
MESSAGE: “Oh, why don’t you ever look at me? My heart beats in sync with the pulsing of your brain, and your beauty is such that I cannot even stand looking at you for more than a second before I start sweating and my many pimples threaten to explode in a brilliant flash of emotion! Oh, world, why are you so cruel?”
Seriously, people, it’s time to face the facts: we want other people to know all of our inner secrets and daily emotions. We need an audience for our boring, day-to-day lives, no matter how big, and the Internet provides us an avenue for doing just that.
Also, it has a heck of a lot of porn.
We can thank Al Gore for that.
Jim has started more blogs in the time it took you to read this column than you could ever imagine. E-mail him at [email protected] to learn more about his dandruff.
