Willkommen im Internet

No one here likes you.
We’re going to offend, insult, abuse, and belit­tle the liv­ing hell out of you. And when you rail against us with “FUCK YOU YOU GEEK WIMP SKATER GOTH LOSER PUNK FAG BITCH!1!!”, we smile to our­selves. We laugh at you because you don’t get it. Then we turn up the heat, hop­ing to draw more enter­tain­ment from your irra­tional fuming.

We will judge you, and we will find you unwor­thy. It is a tri­al by fire, and we won’t even think about turn­ing down the flames until you final­ly understand.

Some of you are smart enough to real­ize that, when you go online, it’s like enter­ing a for­eign coun­try … and you know bet­ter than to igno­rant­ly fuck with the locals. You take the time to lis­ten and think before speak­ing. You learn, and by learn­ing are glad­ly welcomed.

For some of you, it takes a while, then one day it all dawns on you — you get it, and are wel­comed into the fold.

Some of you give up, and we breathe a sigh of relief — we did­n’t want you here any­way. And some of you just nev­er get it. The offen­sive­ly clue­less have a spe­cial place in our hearts — as objects of ridicule. We don’t like you, but we do love you.
You will get mad. You will tell us to go to hell, and call us “nerds” and “geeks”. Don’t bother…we already know exact­ly what we are. And, much like the way hard­core rap has co-opt­ed the word “nig­ger”, turn­ing an insult around on itself to become a semi­se­ri­ous badge of hon­or, so have we done.

“How dare you! I used to beat the crap out of punks like you in high school/college!” You may have owned the play­ing field because you were an ath­lete. You may have owned the stu­dent coun­cil because you were more pop­u­lar. You may have owned the hall­ways and side­walks because you were big and intim­i­dat­ing. Well, wel­come to our world.

Things like ath­leti­cism, pop­u­lar­i­ty, and phys­i­cal prowess mean noth­ing here. We place no val­ue on them … or what car you dri­ve, the size of your bank account, what you do for a liv­ing or where you went to school.

Allow us to intro­duce you to the con­cept of a “mer­i­toc­ra­cy” — the clos­est thing to a form of self-gov­ern­ment we have. In The Unit­ed Mer­i­to­crat­ic Nation-states of the Inter­net, those who can do, rule. Those who wish to rule, learn. Every­one else watch­es from the stands.

You may pos­sess every­thing in the off-line world. We don’t care. You come to the Inter­net pen­ni­less, lack­ing the only thing of real val­ue here: knowledge.
“Who cares? The Inter­net isn’t real any­way!” This atti­tude is uni­ver­sal­ly unac­cept­able. The Inter­net is real. Real peo­ple live behind those han­dles and screen names. Real machines allow it to exist. It’s real enough to change gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, real enough to feed the world’s hun­gry, and even, for some of us, real enough to earn us a pay­check. Using your own def­i­n­i­tion, how “real” is your job? Your stock port­fo­lio? Your polit­i­cal par­ty? What is the mean­ing of “real”, anyway?

Do I sound arro­gant? Sure…to you. Because you prob­a­bly don’t get it yet.
If you insist on stay­ing, then, at the very least, fol­low this advice:

1) No one, ESPECIALLY YOU, will make any law respect­ing an estab­lish­ment of reli­gion, or pro­hibit­ing the free exer­cise there­of; or abridg­ing the free­dom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the peo­ple peace­ably to assem­ble, and to peti­tion the gov­ern­ment for a redress of grievances.
2) Use your brain before ever putting fin­gers to keys.
3) Do you want a pic­ture of you get­ting anal­ly raped by Bill Clin­ton while you’re per­form­ing oral sex on a cow saved to hun­dreds of thou­sands of people’s hard dri­ves? No? Then don’t put your fuck­ing pic­ture on the Inter­net. We can, will, and prob­a­bly already HAVE altered it in awful ways. Expect it to show up on an equal­ly offen­sive website.
4) Real­ize that you are nev­er, EVER going to get that, or any oth­er, offen­sive web page tak­en down. Those of us who run those sites LIVE to piss off peo­ple like you. Those of us who don’t run those sites some­times vis­it them just to read the hatemail from fools like you.
5) Oh, you say you’re going to a lawyer? Be pre­pared for us to gig­gle with girl­ish delight, and for your lawyer to laugh in your face after he explains cur­rent copy­right and par­o­dy law.
6) The Web is not the Inter­net. Stop refer­ring to it that way.
7) We have already received the e‑mail you are about to for­ward to us. Shut up.
8) Don’t reply to spam. You are not going to be “unsub­scribed”.
9) Don’t ever use the term “cyber­space” (only William Gib­son gets to say that, and even he has­n’t real­ly used it for two or three books now). Like­wise, you prove your­self a mar­ket­ing-hype vic­tim if you ever use the term “surf­ing”.
10) With one or two notable excep­tions, chat rooms will not get you laid.
11) It’s a hoax, not a virus warning.
12) The Inter­net is made up of thou­sands of com­put­ers, all con­nect­ed but owned by dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Learn how to use your com­put­er before attempt­ing to con­nect it to some­one else’s.
13) The first per­son who offers to help you is real­ly just try­ing to fuck with you for enter­tain­ment. So is the sec­ond. And the third. And me.
14) Nev­er insult some­one who’s been active in any group longer than you have. You may as well paint a damn’ tar­get on your back.
15) Nev­er get com­fort­able and arro­gant behind your sup­posed mask of anonymi­ty. Don’t be sur­prised when your name, address, and home phone num­ber get thrown back in your smug face. Hell, some of us will snail-mail you a print­ed satel­lite pho­to­graph of your house to dri­ve the point home. Real­ize that you are pow­er­less if this happens…it’s all pub­lic infor­ma­tion, and infor­ma­tion is our stock in trade.
16) No one thinks you are as cool as you think you are.
17) You aren’t going to win any argu­ment that you start.
18) If you’re on AOL, don’t wor­ry about any­thing I’ve said here. You’re already a fuck­ing laugh­ing­stock, and there’s no hope for you.
19) If you can’t take a joke, imme­di­ate­ly sell your com­put­er to some­one who can. RIGHT NOW.
Pissed off? It’s the TRUTH, not these words, that hurts your feel­ings. Don’t ever even pre­tend like I’ve gone & hurt them.
We don’t like you. We don’t want you here. We nev­er will. Save us all the trou­ble and go away.

–Robert “red­paw” Jung, edi­tor, web­mas­ter, and tech­mon­key of deeplight.net