As we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the internet becoming something that the average person could use as a resource at the expense of a phone call, let’s take a look at some of the ways this global archive as evolved. This is especially for you, my good friend StrTrkBeamer, whom I first met in an AOL chat room in 1994.
Do you remember when digital media used to be all about the content? It might have taken 45 minutes for the content to load, but it was cool content! There were band pics, some music downloads, and some righteous PG-13 blogs and streaming sites back then. Today it takes you 45 minutes to find the content because of all the advertising… and even then the content is basically an advertisement for some affiliate product.
When you’re on the internet for 10-12 hours per day, there’s a lot of keys that you end up using as a shortcut. There are also a lot of keys that you wish applied to real life. Splashed tomato sauce on your new shirt? Hit the undo button. Kids are yelling? Hit the mute button. Tired of reading crummy content that was developed through spintax? Hit the escape button and go to Bora Bora.
I love Bora Bora.
Facebook is an awesome resource in a lot of ways. I can speak with people daily even though I haven’t seen them in person for upwards of 15 years in some cases. It’s a way of maintaining friendships, but all the gimmicks like poking and flagging and that useless calendar? Pointless. That dislike button that you would use for those gory decapitation videos or that constant meme that keeps getting reposted to your wall? Never gonna happen.
It never fails that your battery dies when you need your laptop the most. You know that warning notification you’re supposed to get? Never pops up when you need it to do so. It’ll notify you when you’re in the middle of 10k word, crash your Pages app, and then lock up your computer so you must do a full restart, however, because that’s awesome.
And what’s with the sudden 200% battery usage when you want to watch a good movie on a long flight?
“Did you HAPPEN to back up your data?” It’s the first question I’m always asked when a computer goes down. I’ve had three computers die in 4 years. Of course I backed up my data… on the HDD. Ask me in the middle of the day when I’d probably backup all my data with a few minutes of extra time? Never happens. Never.
This speaks for itself. Even adults think I’m strange because I use full, grammatically correct sentences when I text. Probably explains when the only person who routinely texts me is my wife. Laugh out Loud.
“If you don’t like [fill in the blank] then go to another country!” It’s a common rallying cry, but how often do you hear, “If you don’t like the privacy surveillance that Facebook does daily, use a different social media site!”
Hope you liked this article on Facebook, by the way.
Illustrated by kingofnormal.com
