Well, here’s points for a more careful approach to the new and the weird.

Looks like LulzSec and Anonymous are in bed together, and with a cause. Apparently, they intend to pick up where WikiLeaks left off with the arrest of founder Julian Assange and the gutting of the website (and its support pipes).

Except…

Well, except they will get their information through hacking, but more importantly, they probably won’t release the documents with the same subtlety WikiLeaks did. No matter how you look at it, WikiLeaks’ way of releasing its leaks may not have been perfect, but it was full of good intentions. Had it been given a chance, the organization would have improved through criticism, and by now, we could have a responsible whistle-blower, something we all stand to gain from.

And yet the “civilized” world over-reacted, pointed to very formal rules on how things were supposed to be done, and it cried that WikiLeaks wasn’t respectful of anything, accused it to be evil and did everything it could to choke the baby to death. This approach, a classic example of the “Shoot first, ask questions later” ideology, is coming back to bite us in our collective ass.

Reminder: When you encounter something new and weird, there may be something newer and weirder right behind it, and just maybe you’d be better of befriending the former than the later.

In this case, shoving the whistle-blowing cause under the carpet and with false pretensions angered a lot of people. And because no gloves were taken to handle what these people cared about, they’re not going to worry about being civil with what they get their hands on.

Here’s what they might be thinking, I figure:

If you hadn’t castrated WikiLeaks, its civility would have made it a better conduit for these materials, but because you were too stupid to seize the opportunity, you’ll just have us now, dedicated to the truth above all else…

Or something to that effect.

Now, that may go from mildly bad to very bad, only time will tell. But there are people high up the ladder who should have known better and who must be pulling their hair off.

There are currently 35 hours of content being uploaded on Youtube every minute. Most people answer to this with a shrug and ask how much of it will ever be viewed. But the question these people are actually asking is “How much of it will I get to view?” while the real question is “How much of it will find an audience?“

Is your 99% of crap the same as my 99% of crap? Of course not. So it’s more than likely that most of your 99% is somebody else’s 1%. Dismissing theirs means that anyone could dismiss yours, too. And then we’re back to having a few channels of average content that everyone can vaguely relate to.

The reason why there are “universal” superstars and trends in the first place (which most people consider to be the default state) is only a consequence of our former inability to distribute enough content to please everyone. The fact that 99% of the stuff out there is of no interest to you simply means that we’re finally catching up in terms of output: there’s now something for everyone to be passionate about, not just distractedly interested in.

We’re headed toward a sub-culture/niche society, and that means we’re about so see a whole lot of things we don’t agree with around us. Better get used to it.

Sounds like sooner or later, an entire section of this website is going to be dedicated to people missing the point. Here comes another one of those so-called “studies” “demonstrating” that the youth is plagued by an “Internet Addiction”.

These people are trying to assimilate the absorption of drugs to the use of Internet, making fools of themselves in the process. Hey, the more they’re wrong, the more I laugh.

With drug use, the end is the absorption itself. Nobody gets high on an Internet connection, watching bits go by or something. Internet is a tool. A means to an end. And in the context of social websites, what is this end? Connecting with people. Wow, how wrong is that? You were just trying to be more social, and you’ve just been slapped with a disorder.

Humans are social animals. Lock someone up for 24 hours without any connection to the outside world, and we’ll see if he doesn’t show any disturbing symptoms. We’re so much more social now than our cave-dwelling ancestors, so doesn’t it seem natural that our well being is tied to the tools that allow us to maintain these social interactions to the level they’ve reached?

And that’s just the social network angle. More bullshit is distilled across the article:

In one extreme example in South Korea reported by the media, a couple allegedly neglected their three-month-old daughter, who died of malnutrition, because they were on the computer for up to 12 hours a day raising a virtual child.

Wow, really? That’s scary. About as scary as when people forgot to take care of their child when their ass was stuck in an old fashioned couch, facing a good ol’ TV. Just not much more, though.

And then there’s this:

The center’s website cites various examples of students who ran up large debts or dropped out of college due to their obsession.

Yeah? Wouldn’t that be a gambling addiction then? You know, something completely unrelated to Internet?

And finally, a very touching quote from a student:

I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening

Well, that’s too bad for you then, because it seems you’re sickened over nothing but air. What would you say if this quote read something like “I can’t go anywhere on foot, I have to take a car. I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening”?

Evolution is natural.

Evolution means tomorrow doesn’t look like yesterday.

I suggest you start getting used to it.

Funny that. Somewhere in the wordpress tools, I installed a plug-in to track traffic on this website. Turns out somebody wandered around my Heavy Rain post after googling “heavy rain strip”. Imagine his disappointment. Oh yeah, no doubt, he’s a ‘he’.

Okay, let me help you:

There.

Interestingly enough, you know what I did to get this screenshot? Yup, I googled “heavy rain madison titties”.

And the world safely goes round and round.

I had an interesting conversation the other day: my interlocutor was the kind of person who barely, barely knows the difference between an internet connection and an internet browser, and who seemed content with it. Fair enough. The guy only had one email address (the one his ISP set up), which, he told me, he couldn’t even use because of all the spam.

A second went by as I tried to process the thought. I blinked. Spam? Those things our ancestors used to fight with bare hands? But I thought they were extinct!

And that’s the beauty of virtual worlds; the world we see is the one we choose to make. Remember the annoying web pages of yore, the ones that tried to hypnotize you with a sea of  ridiculous animated GIFs? Well, they’re probably still out there. The difference is that no one sees them anymore, because we collectively (yet unconsciously) decided we didn’t want to suffer their sight anymore; they got buried by the magic of Google’s PageRank.

If Internet was a physical world, our cities would be build on top of heaps of crap. Thank God it isn’t.