8/26/23

The Internet Is a Jerk

Yes, you. The internet. You are a jerk. Yeah, you heard me.

You're always yelling. You're always mad about something, some made-up "crisis" that you probably caused yourself, you jerk, and now you're all pissed off. You make shit up and believe it. You got Donald Trump elected president. You're lousy with porn and sick, stupid people doing sick, stupid stuff, with child porn, probably. You make children eat laundry detergent.  You come to my house, and you show up with crap I want to unsee but can't, then you leave without explanation. Jerk. I show you a video I spent three weeks making, artful and clever, and you ignore it. Then some guy puts sunglasses on his dog's butt and you give him your rapt attention. Billions of views, "what a clever fellow," or some shit.. And you want me to pay you for this. Fucking jerk.

When you do give me something decent to read, a bunch of crap like this shows up at the bottom of every page:

Then that video pops up in the corner with that bald guy looking at me and bellowing about something pretty important I guess, but I have the sound off so he just looks stupid. Like you, internet. You're stupid.

You're a stupid jerk.

 



6/19/23

Hitler's Last Tweets

To be accurate, these are technically not tweets, as Twitter would not exist for another 60 years or so. But in 1944 Adolf Hitler, feeling unfairly deprived of that platform, began his own right-leaning version of the future social media giant, which he called Mein Social. Its logo seems to have looked like this:


Hitler apparently posted repeatedly to this site, ramping up his output early in 1945 and peaking in April of that year. Unfortunately, since the internet had yet to be invented, none of his posts actually showed up anywhere until 2017, when they mysteriously uploaded to a backup server in a post office in Hamburg, Germany. There they languished unread until last week, when I found them while conducting some totally above-board "research" online.

I am now releasing these, the final messages the world will ever receive from Adolf Hitler. These give a fascinating view inside the mind of a dictator when his world is crumbling around him.








5/10/23

I Have Some Ideas For Future Moral Panics

I have always thought of myself as a forward-thinking person. I like to plan ahead; failing to do so can result in nasty surprises, creating situations one is not prepared for. You risk becoming trapped in that most desperate of circumstances: having nothing in your life to be unreasonably terrified of. 

I absolutely would not want anyone to go through that experience. It's a horrible, empty feeling, and, I swear, I would not wish it on my worst enemies. Just imagine--not being afraid of or outraged by something possibly going on somewhere that has no real effect on your life but offends you grievously. Think about it--how can you say you care about children when you're not even remotely freaking out? 

I believe the current moral panic over drag shows will eventually fade, as all moral panics do. Either people will stop wearing clothes and accessories traditionally associated with the opposite sex due to new laws, death threats and other forms of intimidation, or, maybe, Americans will come to their senses and realize it's not actually a threat to anyone and they've been losing their shit over nothing. 

HA HA HA HA HA HA. Kidding. Seriously, though, eventually the panic will end. 

So--and this is a public service I am happy to perform--I have been racking my brain and examining our entire culture to come up with some ideas for the next moral panic. We should have months or even years left with the current model, but it never hurts to have somebody in the on-deck circle. 

So I will present some ideas here. For illustration, I'm using Tucker Carlson screenshots from his old show on Fox News. Yes, I am aware he's been fired, and his rumored future show on Twitter will only interest people lacking the internet skills to find it, but I'm going with the assumption that Fox News will soon replace him with someone who looks and sounds just like him. You know, angry white guy in a suit, who resembles nothing so much as the bad guy in an episode of Charlie's Angels. The talent pool is pretty deep. They'll find somebody. 

So here goes: 

1.Magicians 
















Well, this is obvious. The stage magician sawing women in half, making people disappear, making flowers appear from nothing--either these are tricks designed to fool us, or these performers are tapping into a power not of God. If it's the latter, our children may learn to harness this power themselves. 

Two words: parental rights. We have a right to mold our children into what we want them to be, to control their lives absolutely, and never have them question their roles in this world. We can not have them levitating about and throwing lightning bolts and shit. This might interfere with Bible study.

If it's the former, and these are merely tricks designed to fool us, I, for one, do not want to know. 

2. Mimes 
















Yes, this is some seriously low-hanging fruit here, as no one likes mimes. But how are they a threat to children, exactly? How can we make our case? 

Well, they don't talk. THEY DON'T TALK. This obviously endangers children, who may learn to imitate the mimes, then grow up to be adults that know how to shut the fuck up. This could lead to, among other undesirable traits, a habit of listening to others. 

Mimes are clearly grooming our children, and it must stop. Lock them up in a box, I say. 

3. Bob Ross 
















Oh, this guy. This guy

First of all, the guy is constantly painting happy trees. HAPPY TREES, people. If children grow up believing that trees are happy, they might not see them for the clear existential threat that they are. Children could come to respect them as valuable living things, and fail to understand that trees are giant, monstrous beasts that provide homes and food to vermin, cause pollution, and need to be removed so four more people have a place to park their cars. 

He also teaches that you can do anything you can imagine, that you have control over your world, that nature is beautiful, and that little mistakes can become happy accidents. What kind of lesson is that? The danger here is that it will distract children and not prepare them for their true destiny: a utopian future of banned books, active shooter drills, and working with industrial solvents in a factory at age 12. 

And that hair? It's clearly...ethnic. Multi-cultural and woke. Woke, woke, woke. Like he's saying it's okay for white people to borrow from a culture not invented by white people. Like that's okay. 

Also, from the looks of it, his hair could have squirrels or something living in it. Squirrels. Need I say more? 

4. Dogs Playing Poker 
















Dogs do not play poker. DOGS DO NOT PLAY POKER. I mean, they can barely even hold the cards. WHAT ARE WE TEACHING OUR CHILDREN? And how does this help them learn how to handle industrial solvents? 

5. Spelling Bees 
















These contests groom children by teaching them to spell big words. And that, my friends, is the slipperiest of slopes. It's a gateway, clearly, to learning what those words mean. And that could lead to...reading. Reading books. That's right. Books, which, as we know, are often written by authors. This is not the future we want. 

Also, if kids know big words, how are we as adults supposed to show them how smart we are? I am at a loss. 

6. Mr. Bean 
















He's cute, he's funny, and he's clearly unarmed. This will turn our children gay.

4/3/23

Update: No, That's Not Why Computers Were Invented, My Twitter Experience Is Over, And I'm King of the Fifth Grade Again

It's possible that I may have gushed a little too excitedly on the wonders of turning text prompts into images through the use of AI technology.

Yes, I had a terrific amount of fun for a few weeks, but novelty does wear off eventually, and the more I thought about it, the more I worried about the obvious dangers of this technology falling into the wrong hands. And by "wrong hands," of course, I mean "the general public." In other words, people.

People are scum. They will use this technology like they've used every advance throughout history, to screw each other over. Now it can be done with machine-like efficiency.

Then there's that other danger, that AI will take over the world and make the perfectly sensible and defensible decision to eliminate humanity. On one of my last forays with Craiyon, I decided to ask a direct question:


I'll take that as a yes.

And now we have Chat GPT and the like, which can generate a wall of grammatically correct text based on some simple prompt, making writers like me obsolete, or would if we weren't already obsolete due to the fact that nobody reads anymore. It does appear that there are still some bugs in the technology, as AI doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between facts and the feverish internet ranting of whatever randos that it is trained on. Or maybe that's a feature, I don't know. But using algorithms to predict the next word in a sentence based on people's usage of the language is bound to have problems, because, as we know, people use words wrong a lot.

If my experience with autosuggest is any guide, I'll be better off choosing my own words for the balance of my life. I was writing a comment on another blog recently and wanted to include a reference to an event in which some lizards rode a natural raft across the ocean to another island and proceeded to colonize that new island. The words "lizards rafting over from another" resulted in the suggested next word planet.

Uh, yeah. I'll just continue to do my own writing. Sorry, Skynet, I don't need your help. I was writing professionally when you were still playing Pong, you dumb bastard.

And now, regarding the Twitter experience...

I wrote here about my experience with the bird-logoed social media site. Shortly thereafter, one Elon Musk bought Twitter, and between his demonstrated misunderstanding of how free speech works, and the fact that I prefer that billionaires not make more money off me than necessary, I abandoned ship, and have not looked back. 

I have been following the news, however, and have managed to derive more than a little schadenfreude from watching Elon flail about as advertisers and users flee and his new acquisition loses money to the point where he is telling everyone that Twitter, for which he paid the princely sum of $44 billion, is now evaluated at $20 billion. Tempering my joy somewhat is the knowledge that he mostly is putting other people's money at risk, because that's what billionaires do. That's how they get to stay billionaires despite legacies of repeated failures, and how they retain power and influence despite obvious idiocy.

And Elon has that in spades. I mean, the man can't even get off a passable that's what she said joke, which I'm guessing any half-bright nine-year-old could pull off.

Two problems billionaires always seem to have: they never think they're making enough money, and they don't get humor.

"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"I don't know. Ha ha ha ha ha."

In any case, Twitter is now in my rear-view mirror. Which, I think, is an option now on the new Tesla vehicles, along with a steering wheel.

As for the last part of the title of this post, that whole "King of the Fifth Grade" bit, you can find the full explanation here.  Things have certainly changed since I wrote that back in 2011; I now live in a world where the Kansas City Chiefs are a budding NFL dynasty, with three Super Bowl appearances and two championships in the last four years. My football life has never been better, and the best part?

I deserve every bit of it.









7/9/22

Why Computers Were Invented

 I have wanted to try this since I saw my first example on Twitter. This is craiyon, formerly known as DALL-E mini, and every other artistic medium that ever existed is now obsolete.

6/30/22

My Experience With Twitter Thus Far


 When I re-acquired home internet service a few months ago, after mostly being away from it for nine years, I had grand ideas about reviving my blog, reconnecting and catching up with all the other blogs I used to follow, and being part of a smart and articulate virtual community again.

Little did I know, the internet went through some changes between 2012 and 2022. Some of the blogs I used to read are, well, not exactly dead, I would say, but any life left there resembles a lichen--technically alive, just not very ambitious. And of the ones that are still active, the comment sections have slowed to a point that make them no longer a place to hang out.

So, Twitter. 

I wouldn't have thought it, but Twitter has ended up being my main online hangout, despite the limitations of the 280-character format, despite not having heard anything good about it for years and years. I restarted my account, @feralboy12. I am mostly calling myself Nick Soapdish, although I can change that depending on my mood. And I do have moods.

My legion of followers currently numbers 38.  Most of my tweets are replies to tweets from people much more famous than I, luminaries such as William Shatner, George Takei, David Crosby, Michael McKean, Lynda Carter, Mike Pence, Liz Cheney, and Herschel Walker, none of whom have acknowledged my commentary, and Sophia Bush, who has.



She likes me. I have the receipt.

But most of what I had been hearing about Twitter led me to expect a fairly godawful experience; the term I have heard most often is "cesspool." In my experience, though, Twitter is more like a giant field full of weird plants and many anthills. It's possible to wander about and simply observe, remaining inconspicuous, mainly reading and watching videos, avoid the troublesome areas, and have a reasonably entertaining time. I do this sometimes.

But it actually takes some effort not to wander over to one of the anthills and just check things out. And, me being me, having a serious case of "someone's wrong on the internet!" I can't always resist tossing something in among those busy little insects.

And it really is like disturbing an ant's nest. Countless weird little robotic creatures begin scurrying about, dashing here and there in furious, yet oddly pointless, activity. They reply back to you, repeatedly, then they reply to each other, repeatedly, posting pictures and memes and gifs, repeatedly, even if you never reply back, going on and on long after you've stopped checking your notifications for the day.

And they do sometimes snap at you, rearing up their little insect heads, getting all bitey with antennae waving wildly, intending to be threatening, behavior which might actually work against, say, another ant.

This exchange started with a tweet from the esteemed Republican congresswoman from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene, regarding the horrors supposedly found on Hunter Biden's laptop. She had no specifics on what was supposedly found there, but whatever it was, she seemed to want to impeach Joe Biden for it. I channeled my inner Colonel Kurtz and my inner Perry Mason and replied.



(Unrelated, that last tweet there is in reference to my photo of the Paul Bunyan and Babe statues at Trees of Mystery, as seen in my profile pic at the head of this post.)

But that little kick did seem to set them in motion. And then things got weird for a while. I just watched.





First of all, Mike is right. I would avoid watching child porn if someone tried to show me some.
Please, please, people, tell me you're not sending each other child porn over the internet? 

There was more. I'll spare you, however.

Most of my interactions have been more benign than this encounter. I suppose the high point so far is Sophia Bush; second might be the time I made former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams laugh with a joke about toothpaste, getting an actual, verified "LOL" in reply.

The pinnacle, of course, would be to get a reply or like from William Shatner. That hasn't happened yet. Either he doesn't read his replies, or he doesn't actually enjoy unsolicited references to a role he played on TV decades ago.


Ah, but I do love him. My captain. My king. My god. My Kurok. Perhaps someday he will do me the honor of acknowledging my puny existence.

I must go now. Twitter calls. You can find me there @feralboy12. I'll be the guy telling Mike Pence to hang in there and sending dick jokes to Lauren Boebert. 






6/21/22

For Serious Bob Ross Fans Only

 


I suppose technically this isn't really a Bingo card, as those creatures are generally 5X5 and have a free space in the middle. Maybe it's actually Score Four we're playing with this, but since it's likely me and three other people that remember anything about Score Four, and I don't remember much (other than it's played at dawn, as a sort of duel) we'll just go with Bingo.

You do need to be a serious Bob Ross fan to really get anything out of this. And yes, I am a serious Bob Ross fan. While I don't necessarily consider him to have been a great painter, I do consider him a great artist in that I believe his true art was not painting but doing a painting show, the immortal Joy of Painting. For stress reduction, there is nothing better.

5/24/22

Former Trump Hotel Now Haunted By World’s Dumbest Ghost

 

July 27, 2042

WASHINGTON, D.C.—It would seem that the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel here in Washington has a guest who just won’t check out.

For several years now, guests at the opulent luxury hotel have been reporting that the upper floors are haunted by a suit-wearing ghost with really bad hair.

“He’s so annoying,” said one recent guest. “He never shuts up, and all he ever talks about is himself.”

The hotel was once owned by the Trump Organization and was called the Trump Hotel until its sale to CGI Merchant Group and its partner Hilton Worldwide Holdings in 2022. It was named after Donald J. Trump, the former U.S. President who died from drinking bleach in 2029.

While the guests affected by the apparition have many theories as to who the ghost was before he died, there is one thing they all agree on.

“He’s got to be the dumbest ghost on the entire ethereal plane,” said one man who stayed at the hotel last year. “He keeps ranting about how he didn’t actually die and that it was all a hoax by Democrats, and that he will reappear like a miracle any day now.

“It’s all deep state this, blah blah fake news, something something great again.”

Other guests have noted what seems to be a remarkable lack of awareness on the part of the disembodied spirit, who has been haunting the structure for at least a few years.

“Sometimes he turns like he’s going to leave, and it’s like he forgets he can go through walls,” said one woman.  “He just walks right into the wall with a big thud.”

Another woman noticed an apparent obsession with objects in the room. “He’ll point at stuff around the room, saying, ‘person, woman, man, camera, TV,’” she said. “Then he’ll stand there grinning like he expects a goddamn prize.”

Other women have reported attempts to grope them with weird, stubby little fingers.

The strange specter does have his defenders, however.

“He’s the greatest ghost in history,” said one hotel employee, practically spitting out the words between missing teeth. “He tells the truth where other ghosts are too afraid.”

Most who have seen him, however, are not so enamored of the lecherous lich. “God, he is tiresome,” said one elderly man. “Fortunately, he usually leaves when we turn the TV off.”

It’s all a mystery, but one thing is certain: the cretinous creature won’t be going away any time soon.