The 80s Were Terrible: #4

The Internets

Imagine being an adolescent in say... 1985. What do you do? Everyone in pro sports is either a coke-head or a 'roid-rager, and the transcendent 1986 Mets team (with coke falling out of their ears) hasn't happened yet. Sports are out.

As previously mentioned, since these are the 80s, all of the music sucks and your clothes are ugly. Two more strikes.

I guess you can go watch some movies; (this is the only cultural area where the 80s can stand up a bit) not that Sixteen Candles and Young John Cusack movies are examples of fine cinema, but at least they weren't bad.

What I'm getting at is that you won't see "facebook stalk that girl in ec class", or "post another incredibly self-indulgent blog entry" pop up on the list of things to do, since there was a distinct lack of internets at this time. What we do know is that the 80s were when the embryonic internets were being developed, so I'm gonna go ahead and blame them for it. Remember, no research happening here.

Some of you may be thinking that the internets are a good thing. They allow you to do things like stalk that girl in ec class that wears her hair to the side in that certain sexy way, you know, the one with the wal... sorry. Umm, I mean, they let you access important information so quickly! And connect to people across the globe that you would never meet otherwise! Two problems:

1. If you need to research for an academic paper, you should probably be going to the library, not sitting on your couch trolling wikipedia in one window while "kitten cannon" runs in another background.

2. Pretty much everyone on the internet is male, white, 13 years old, and from Arizona. Sorry, that's how it is, and all of those "Swedish people" you meet on the internet are just the aforementioned 13 year olds looking for cybersex. You're not breaking any cultural barriers... that is unless you're one of those a-holes that has a thing against Tempe. I SEE YOU.


So I have completely discredited any attempts to credit the internet with anything even remotely positive. The next step is to show that it is actually a detriment to society.

MySpace. If you watch Dateline NBC you know that MySpace consists entirely of two userbases: 1) Delinquent, over-sexed 12 year old girls posting thong pics on their little personal page next to embedded Fall Out Boy videos and 2) 32 year old truckers trying* to have sex with those 12 year old delinquents.

This is seriously the most disturbing thing happening in our society right now. The fact that only Dateline has been brave enough to take on and present this to a national audience sickens me, and leads me to strongly question the integrity of our media today.

I mean, Fall Out Boy sucks really badly.**



* - Not so much "trying" as "doing it with ease on a regular basis"

** - This is a joke, people. Embedded video content that auto-plays when you open a page sucks too.

*** - Pedophilia is very bad.