#oneaday Day 116: Dear The Internet

Dear The Internet,

I am writing to you to express my concern about several people who spend their time on you. Not in a sexual way. Actually, sometimes in a sexual way, but that’s beside the point. The fact is, there are people out there who do annoying things. I am aware that this is not your fault, nor are they doing it specifically to wind me and only me up. However, the fact is, I am wound up by them and I would like you to stop them, please.

People who comment first on things should be applauded for their tenacity. Assuming they have anything worthwhile to say. However, unfortunately, the sort of person who enjoys pointing out the fact they are the first to comment on something rarely has anything useful to say. This then has the knock-on effect of causing the following commenters to assume that the thing that has been posted is the sort of thing only enjoyed by twats and, by extension, is not something over which a reasonable, thought-provoking or entertaining discussion might take place. Please see what you can do to stop this happening.

The immediacy with which information is available on you is astounding. During the last paragraph, I was able to quickly look up the word “tenacity” to ensure it was, in fact, the correct word I was thinking of. (It was.) However, this does not mean that more lengthy prose no longer has a place in society. Whether on a message board, a blog post, an online news article or a Wikipedia article, the saying “less is more” is not always true. Consider these two sentences: “Pete is a dude.” and “Pete is an awesome dude who likes video games and music, and has also recently taken to punctuating his blog posts with MS Paint stickmen representations of himself and numerous other anonymous people.” Which of the two sentences tells you more about Pete?

As an aside, however, this does not mean you should ever allow your denizens to use text-speak in order to cram more information into less space.

Laughter is the best medicine, but it is not punctuation. We already have some perfectly good punctuation marks to use. Here is one: a colon. And a full stop. And oh look – a dash! And an exclamation mark. But what about a question mark? Or some sort of slash/”quotation marks” combination? All of these things are fine and serve to make our written communication more clear.

“LOL” is not a punctuation mark. It means “laughing out loud”, something I genuinely doubt people are actually doing every time they type “LOL”. I’ve heard a lot about privacy concerns around you, so could you make use of some of these loopholes to watch people through their webcams and squirt deodorant in their faces if they type “LOL” and they’re not actually laughing, please?

I’ve bought things in the past. I once bought a copy of Oasis’ first album Definitely Maybe the day before their second album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? came out. I didn’t know any better at the time, as I was just getting into popular music, but I wasn’t annoyed, because Definitely Maybe is a good album too. I was quite impressed that my friends at the time didn’t feel the need to take the piss out of me for this, because they too knew that Definitely Maybe was still a worthwhile purchase even though the next album was on the way.

So if I buy something these days, could you see if it’s possible to stop people saying what I’ve bought is not very good and suggesting something better instead? I happen to like the thing I bought. That’s why I chose to buy it over the thing they’re recommending. Maybe I spent a little more. I’m fine with that – I can deal with the consequences. I’m sure their thing is really good too, which is why I’m not suggesting that they buy the thing I bought instead of the thing they bought. Do you see?

Finally, Internet, I believe that one of your most exciting features that you told everyone about when you first appeared on the scene was the ability to bring the whole world closer together. Terms like “information superhighway” and “global village” were coined for us to all imagine one big happy family holding hands and enjoying things together.

I like this idea. Happy families are nice. We can enjoy things together. So would you mind doing something about the people who feel the constant need to say something sucks because the thing they think sucks does almost the same as the thing they think doesn’t suck but maybe not quite as well in their opinion? Because that just invites other people to show up and say the thing that the other person thinks sucks actually doesn’t suck because they think it doesn’t suck and the thing that the other person actually thought didn’t suck really sucks instead because the other person is a douchebag and their mother is a homosexual?

I have all the things that some people think suck and others think don’t suck, and I don’t think any of them suck. Could you spread a little bit of this love around please?

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, Internet. I’m sure it will provide you with some helpful feedback on how to make yourself work better. You might need to fire a few people, though.

Yours sincerely,

Pete Davison