I haven’t slapped anyone with a wet haddock a while, so here’s a post to make up for that.
Recently, I’ve noticed a big increase in the number of people being wrong on the internet. Oh I know, people have always been wrong on the internet, but usually they were wrong in the right way: they disagreed with you, but they did, at least, have an informed opinion, it was the wrong opinion but they sincerely believed it, and could argue their point rationally.
I’ve spent many happy hours engaging with the right sort of wrong on the internet. I’ve shared my thoughts on the great DeNiro vs Pacino debate; wrestled with the thorny issues surrounding the whole Led Zep vs BOC controversy; I’ve even waded in to the toxic swamp that is Bruce Lee vs Jackie Chan. I can even tolerate the dissenting voices of Man United fans, they are of course wrong, but it’s the right kind of wrong.
No, the wrong people I’m talking about are those Attila the Mom* mentions in her most recent Asshat of the Week post, those who are wrong because they seem to lack the ability to actually read the words in front of them. Instead, they read a title, assume they know what lies beneath, and rattle on about what they thought the writer had said, rather than what is actually written there. Alternatively, they’ll ignore both the title and the article, and drone on about something else entirely.
These people are everywhere. At one time you only found their UK brethren on the Daily Mail website, but now they’re branching out. They’ve even infiltrated the Guardian! Nowadays, Charlie Brooker makes an amusing point about some aspect of popular culture, and a boatload of the wrongs turn up to berate him for not caring that penguins don’t have any socks because they’ve been stolen by chavs**. Meanwhile, another bunch of wrongs will post what appears to be a random assortment of letters that make absolutely no sense***, ‘u suk u libral twet’.
And now they’re even turning up here. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been merrily deleting what I thought was spam, until I took a closer look and realised they were genuine comments. To give an example: one wrong person left me a comment predicting the end of something, possibly the world****. I dunno. But, the wrongest thing about the comment was the fact that the commenter, somehow, believed this was my fault. I have no idea why. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what I’ve done that could be so influential it could effect events thirty years hence, but I’m flummoxed. Maybe they know something I don’t, maybe I have some hitherto undiscovered superpower. Gosh! I wonder what it is. I’m guessing invisibility because I know I can’t fly, I don’t have x-ray vision and I have absolutely no talent for shape-shifting – truly, if I could do the latter I’d spend most of the day as a cat. Anyway, I apologise for whatever it is, and would like to thank the wrong person for alerting me to my apocalyptic tendencies.
I do think it’s time we re-introduced the concept of the walled garden website especially for the pathologically wrong. Such places were commonplace in the late 90s/early 00s. The idea was you signed up with an isp whose website then became your home page. The problem was once you accessed it, it was extremely hard to escape and access the rest of the internet because every link led to another page on the same site so you just trundled around, eventually finding yourself back where you started. When I first went online, I spent several days trapped on Compuserve, endlessly going round in circles trying to figure out where the real internet was kept; it felt like someone had used Portmeirion as a template. Fortunately, I then discovered Google, and made my escape.
A walled garden site was a bad thing for most people because it kind of defeated the object of the internet – that it gives people from all over the world a chance to interact with each other. However, for the very wrong it would be a very good thing. They could just hang out with kindred spirits, all being wrong (and inarticulate, and crazy) together. Meanwhile, the rest of us can get back to the right kind of wrongness. Heck, we could even finally resolve the age old dispute about shuffling zombies vs running zombies which, like this post, has gone on for far too long.
In the meantime, the very wrong should consider themselves slapped with that wet haddock.
*I’m a little jealous of Attila the Mom. She came up with Asshat of the Week, and managed to find a photo of a donkey wearing a hat to accompany it. I decide to slap people with a metaphorical haddock and can I find a photo of such a thing? Can I heck 
** OK, I’ve never seen that ‘exact’ comment, but it’s only a matter of time.
*** No, they are not teenagers using text speak, these are usually middle aged men who have lived their entire lives in this country, yet have somehow managed to avoid learning the language. It takes a very special kind of wrong to be able to do that. For a while I did wonder if these people were getting their dogs to comment for them …. but it can’t be that, dogs are far brighter and have much better social skills.
**** It happens in 2042, so make a note of that if you feel you might like to make plans for whatever it is.
Jack Yan
The problem with the internet? We have the wrong kind of wrong people
Recently, I’ve noticed a big increase in the number of people being wrong on the internet. Oh I know, people have always been wrong on the internet, but usually they were wrong in the right way: they disagreed with you, but they did, at least, have an informed opinion, it was the wrong opinion but they sincerely believed it, and could argue their point rationally.
I’ve spent many happy hours engaging with the right sort of wrong on the internet. I’ve shared my thoughts on the great DeNiro vs Pacino debate; wrestled with the thorny issues surrounding the whole Led Zep vs BOC controversy; I’ve even waded in to the toxic swamp that is Bruce Lee vs Jackie Chan. I can even tolerate the dissenting voices of Man United fans, they are of course wrong, but it’s the right kind of wrong.
No, the wrong people I’m talking about are those Attila the Mom* mentions in her most recent Asshat of the Week post, those who are wrong because they seem to lack the ability to actually read the words in front of them. Instead, they read a title, assume they know what lies beneath, and rattle on about what they thought the writer had said, rather than what is actually written there. Alternatively, they’ll ignore both the title and the article, and drone on about something else entirely.
These people are everywhere. At one time you only found their UK brethren on the Daily Mail website, but now they’re branching out. They’ve even infiltrated the Guardian! Nowadays, Charlie Brooker makes an amusing point about some aspect of popular culture, and a boatload of the wrongs turn up to berate him for not caring that penguins don’t have any socks because they’ve been stolen by chavs**. Meanwhile, another bunch of wrongs will post what appears to be a random assortment of letters that make absolutely no sense***, ‘u suk u libral twet’.
And now they’re even turning up here. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been merrily deleting what I thought was spam, until I took a closer look and realised they were genuine comments. To give an example: one wrong person left me a comment predicting the end of something, possibly the world****. I dunno. But, the wrongest thing about the comment was the fact that the commenter, somehow, believed this was my fault. I have no idea why. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what I’ve done that could be so influential it could effect events thirty years hence, but I’m flummoxed. Maybe they know something I don’t, maybe I have some hitherto undiscovered superpower. Gosh! I wonder what it is. I’m guessing invisibility because I know I can’t fly, I don’t have x-ray vision and I have absolutely no talent for shape-shifting – truly, if I could do the latter I’d spend most of the day as a cat. Anyway, I apologise for whatever it is, and would like to thank the wrong person for alerting me to my apocalyptic tendencies.
I do think it’s time we re-introduced the concept of the walled garden website especially for the pathologically wrong. Such places were commonplace in the late 90s/early 00s. The idea was you signed up with an isp whose website then became your home page. The problem was once you accessed it, it was extremely hard to escape and access the rest of the internet because every link led to another page on the same site so you just trundled around, eventually finding yourself back where you started. When I first went online, I spent several days trapped on Compuserve, endlessly going round in circles trying to figure out where the real internet was kept; it felt like someone had used Portmeirion as a template. Fortunately, I then discovered Google, and made my escape.
A walled garden site was a bad thing for most people because it kind of defeated the object of the internet – that it gives people from all over the world a chance to interact with each other. However, for the very wrong it would be a very good thing. They could just hang out with kindred spirits, all being wrong (and inarticulate, and crazy) together. Meanwhile, the rest of us can get back to the right kind of wrongness. Heck, we could even finally resolve the age old dispute about shuffling zombies vs running zombies which, like this post, has gone on for far too long.
In the meantime, the very wrong should consider themselves slapped with that wet haddock.
*I’m a little jealous of Attila the Mom. She came up with Asshat of the Week, and managed to find a photo of a donkey wearing a hat to accompany it. I decide to slap people with a metaphorical haddock and can I find a photo of such a thing? Can I heck
** OK, I’ve never seen that ‘exact’ comment, but it’s only a matter of time.
*** No, they are not teenagers using text speak, these are usually middle aged men who have lived their entire lives in this country, yet have somehow managed to avoid learning the language. It takes a very special kind of wrong to be able to do that. For a while I did wonder if these people were getting their dogs to comment for them …. but it can’t be that, dogs are far brighter and have much better social skills.
**** It happens in 2042, so make a note of that if you feel you might like to make plans for whatever it is.