Damn you internet so being so awfully wonderful.
All it takes is a keyboard and a mouse and you can journey back and forth between the furthest reaches of the internet to learn about everything from the origins of the vibrator to goatse (don’t look that up…seriously).
But with every good thing there are astonishingly loathsome aspects that make you grind your teeth and writhe in anger. Things that make you want to punch your monitor. Things that make you want to…well…close your browser frankly. But we both know you won’t do that. So read on in solidarity young webizen.
Auto-starting videos
Chrome is a big help with auto-starting videos by putting that little sound icon at the top of the tab, but they can only do so much. You have six tabs are open. Two of them are running video ads. But the ads aren’t at the top or bottom of either page. So you frantically try to lower the volume on your speakers and find them hiding, noisy fuckers while everyone at work gives you the ‘we knew your punkass wasn’t working anyway’ eyebrow of judgment.
People who say, “I saw this on Reddit”
Ok redditors, we get it. You’re right next to the spiggot getting the freshest viral fare faster than anyone else. We get that you probably saw that video from last month when it had 300 views and it hadn’t quite started to molest Facebook news feeds yet. But I don’t give a fuck. I don’t care that it’s a repost. I don’t care if you were the one that originally tweeted it. All I want is to get my giggle going so I can forget my shit job and mounting debt for a minute.
So leave me alone and go put in a request for another Kevin Smith IAMA, ok?
Comment section trolls
The greatest thing about the internet is both its biggest gift and curse, simultaneously. This greatest thing is the ability to bring, literally, all walks of life to one place to share ideas, opinions and knowledge on a myriad of subjects. Unfortunately, that lasts for about one thread before trolls trundle through and start flinging bullshit like disgruntled monkeys at the zoo. So instead of bathing in the wealth of knowledgeable humanity we usually end up wading through the raw, infested sewage of poisonous intellect. Fuckin’ comment section trolls. Dicks.
Not you though, Berta Lovejoy. You’re alright with me.
Memes
If you’re female I will look at and LIKE your silly little memes because I’m trying to get a piece of that cookie. If you’re a guy, cut that shit out. Unless you can somehow prove to me that making a meme will add fat to your paycheck focus on working out, building the portfolio or some other way more useful activity.
Facebook’s auto-play feature (kills phone plans)
If you do NOT have an unlimited plan (which makes all of us since every carrier’s ‘unlimited’ plan is bullshit)
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/technology/is-unlimited-data-really-unlimited.html/?a=viewall
Facebook’s autoplay feature is a fucking damn nightmare. The minute you install that blasted Facebook app the default option for video autoplay is ‘On.’ So every lame video that shows up in your news feed is auto-downloaded whether you wanted to watch it or not. And if you reach the end of your data plan your wallet could be savaged like a pack of gazelles at dinner time on the Sahara.
Wanna disable it? Click on that little ‘down-facing’ arrow in the upper righthand corner and scroll down to ‘Settings.’ Click it, then look to the left and move down that menu until you see ‘Videos.’ Click that, then look to the right for the ‘Auto-play’ feature and tick the ‘Off’ option. Done. And fuck you Facebook.
Terms of Service
Terms of Service. Terms and conditions. Whatever you call it, it’s that’s little menu that pops up that requires you to click ‘Agree’ before you can finish installing software or login to a website that you regularly use. Often times, they change the wording, language and content to make it more obfuscating and verbose. They don’t really expect you to read it. But if you did you’d realize that all they’re really saying is:
- Use our site at your own risk.
- Any thing you do on our site can be used for you or against you however the fuck we want.
- Agreement is mandatory or we’ll kick/ban you like you’re the scat fetish guy in a cam girl’s sex chat.
Popup Signups
These sites always crack me up. Midway through enjoying some interesting little article the screen auto-darkens and an in-site popup asks me if I want to sign up for updates. Isn’t that cute? A site wants me to give them an email address and other personal info so they can update me!..as if that shit isn’t straight out of 2003.
Motherfuckers, if I want to know about your articles I’ll read them when next I Google the subjects they speak upon. And we both know that any email I give you is one of five spam addresses that I use to swallow up emails that I’ll never read in accounts I’ll never login to. But hey, if you can keep finding silly-ass advertisers that will buy up space on those e-blasts so that you can keep making articles for me to read, so be it.
Youtube videos that start with ads, then don’t play the video
Of all the dirty, rotten, fuckered up ludicrosity going on in Internet Land, this bit of business here is bananas. See, once upon a time YouTube wanted to save up space on their servers so they added a feature called ‘dash’ to their video players. Dash would only allow a portion of the video to download as you watched it instead of just downloading the whole thing and waiting for you to actually finish it. That way, if you moved on from a video before it ran all the way through YouTube will have saved itself from consuming what would have been significant server space and processor power.
The problem is that dash sometimes performs like a drunken donkey on roller skates. Most times it’s ok, but sometimes it’s just an ass. And after patiently waiting through a mandatory thirty second pharmaceutical commercial to see the forty second video you went there for in the first place the video’s random inability to load is enough to…you know…make you wanna log out and go do some shit outside or something.
Social Justice Warrior Brigades
If the Comment Section Troll is a mean-spirited, profanity-laden agent of chaos the Social Justice Warrior is his direct nemesis in service to the random. The cis-poly-gender-able SJW is there not only to check every inch of your perceived prejudice, no matter what they actually understand about the subject matter at hand, but to also remind you of your insensitivity to society at large, your ignorance to a plethora of gender preferences and to introduce you to every ounce of anecdotal evidence to counter your arguments that they can possibly surmise. Unlike the troll she isn’t here to argue. She’s here to be the argument.
Social Justice Warrior Brigades are whole bands of SJW’s that take as many genuinely innocuous things you say as possible, amplify them, run ‘em through Tumblr, then initiate Twitter campaigns against them until someone loses funding or someone else is starts apologizing for offenses they don’t even understand.
ISPs
For everyone one of you that spent hours on the phone with automated prompts, for every one of you that got charged way too much for services you didn’t ask for or want, for every one of you that watched your Netflix videos degrade in quality while your ISP increased the amount on your bill…I know you. And I know you well.
They have us over a barrel, these guys. We want access to a universe of information and interactivity and they want to charge you for every megabyte of it, piece by digital piece. But hey, your ISPs CEO can’t buy that third lake house in the Hamptons without upping your fees now, can he?