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We're a few weeks post-election, and a lot of bandwidth is being consumed by morons lowing desolately about the Presidential outcome. I'm no fan of Mr. Bush, but people who talk about moving to Canada and apologizing to the world should be encouraged to get off their asses and start the process of relocation, and the rest of us--whether conservative, liberal, Green Party or politically agnostic--should be ready to lend these idiots a hand. Need a ride to the airport? Some quick French lessons? Please lord, let me help you leave the country. The stunning dumbness of people, shrouded in a cynical cloak of world-weariness, never ceases to irritate me. But not surprise me. I know full well that people are stupid. How do I know? Because I run a web site. Owning a piece of virtual real estate on the Internet is an eye-opening experience. It's a lot easier than you'd imagine; when I first started this web site I thought it was going to be very difficult to do, full of arcane Unix knowledge and strange protocols, but in reality it's pretty simple. My host, www.hostingforhumans.com, actually does most of the hard work, and all I have to do is keep everything up to date and do some simple configuration stuff. One of the things I do is download my site logs and see who's been linking to my site. This is fun for an egotist like me, of course, but it's also useful in detecting some of the morons of the world, whose muddy tracks show up all over my web logs. These bastards come in a few flavors: Image Thieves: Hey, I steal images from the Internet all the time. If I need some clip art for an article in the zine or a web graphic, I'll do a Google search and grab something from a web site, work it over a little with The Gimp, and slap it up uncredited--not strictly kosher, but unless you're talking about original art, probably harmless. At least I think it is. I mean, if I steal a GIF of a dollar bill from your web site, what's the harm? But Image Thieves don't do this--it would be far too difficult for them to learn how to it. Instead, they find an image on my site they like--Tim, the Angry Clown's logo is popular--and simply link to it. They like to do this in forums a lot, using my image as their avatar. Mother-fuckers. The problem is that every time that web page gets viewed, they're sucking my bandwidth--which I pay for--to display the image. Because they are lazy shitkickers, I end up with 800 hits in my web logs and when I investigate, I find 800 views of a forum page for Hello Kitty where HkittyLovah233 has hotlinked to my web site like an ass. Fucking morons. It takes me a second to replace their stolen logo with something horrifying in revenge, but it's petty revenge and not very satisfying. Log Spammers: The main reason I know people are stupid is the fact that Spam attracts any customers at all. Lord in heaven, who in the world actually buys enough Cialis from Spam emails to make it worth the Spammers while? Idiots, that's who. Morons. People so dumb they have only a tenuous connection to reality, because a typical day comes at them far too fast and furious to process. As a result of these morons, I get Spam in my referrer logs. I'll see something like http://www.adminhost.com/reviews-of-cool-web-sites.html and I'll think, hey! Someone reviewed my web site! So I'll surf to that page to see what they're saying about me. And what do I find? An ad for web site services. Mother-fuckers. My first reaction upon realizing that I've been had is to contemplate how I can possibly hurt these bastards for robbing me of precious time. After a moment I usually realize that there's no way I can get back at them, calm down, and return to my usual angry simmer instead of Kick-Ass Kung Fu levels of anger. But, you see, the reason I continue to get Log Spam is because someone out there clicks on the link and actually buys something from these motherfuckers. Because of your stupidity, sir, I suffer the consequences. The Internet, you see, puts me in virtual direct contact with millions of people across the globe, and thus I am exposed to levels of stupidity that used to be considered hazardous. In my flesh-and-blood life very few people actually have contact with me at any given time, you see; I see the morons coming, buck-toothed grins on display and sweaty hands extended, and I run away as fast as I can. But on The Internet, the morons are always there--always! Grinning and extending their palms directly into my referrer logs and image repositories. You can't escape them. Just one of the many lessons I've learned from running this web site. The others being: Never buy Cialis over the Internet, never become a minister of any religion just because they're willing to waive the chicken sacrifice for Internet applicants, and never, ever update your bank account over the Internet at your bank's Russian web site with the word “bank” misspelled. I now pass my wisdom on to you and wish you well with it. Just don't fuck with my referrer logs, or I'm coming after you. E-mail me your outrage here. Jeff |
November 11, 2004