Thank you, AOL.
March 12th, 2009 . by Andy (TANcast's #1 Ear-Rapist)Years ago, America Online flooded everyone’s mailboxes (real ones, not “inboxes”) with floppy diskettes and CDs promising easy access to Teh Intarwebz. Millions bought in, signed up, and logged on. Of those, tens or hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, were idiots, children, or idiot children.
Human discourse has not been the same since.
Everyone likes to talk about democracy, freedom of expression, and equality in fluffy abstract terms, but a recent stroll through Apple’s App Store for the iPhone and iTouchMyselfPod was a more concrete exploration of what these terms really mean.
Simply put, the democratizing influence of convincing every mouth-breather that their American Life would be best spent on America Online has led to them believing that they should, nay, must make their every opinion known to all their peers surfing the tubes.
I’ve plucked a pair of App Store product reviews from the luminiferous aether to illustrate my point.
Let’s start with a review of the AS3 API Reference app. Quoth Tjenicek in his/her/its 1-Star review:
Use?
Idk what to do or how to use it.
Help me?
For those curious, AS3 means “ActionScript 3“, and refers to the scripting language (related to JavaScript) used to program Adobe Flash or Adobe Flex. This app is, per the name and the description provided by the author, a quick reference guide for people writing ActionScript code. I loaded the app and it is quite clearly exactly what it claims. From the review I can only imagine that this fucktard downloaded it without having any idea what ActionScript was. Said fucktard then gave this app a 1-Star review as clearly the fucktard’s ignorance was the fault of the app.
You may think I’m being harsh. You may even be right about that.
Perhaps Tjenicek is in the middle of some sort of performance-art piece that requires him/her/it to download and review every App Store application in alphabetical order, and the sheer number has caused him/her/it to run out of ideas by the late As. Perhaps after thoughtfully reviewing the Ask Your Mom app, this was all that was left in the tank.
Whether you discount that one, wait ’til you see the next review.
For the puzzle game Blocked, Kj fauve wrote in his/her/its 1-Star review:
Nice
This is a really nice game me and my dad always play this on our spare time. My real name is Kyle but I changes it to kj because I thought it would be real cool to do it so yeah thanks for your time I hope u enjoy reading about me And yeah I’m gay
Words fail me, just as punctuation and coherent trains of thought escaped the reviewer. We’ll just note the 1-Star (out of 5) score on what appears to be a positive review and move on to the summary.
So AOL gets everyone on the internet by lowering the barrier to entry from “Install correct Winsock version, Configure PPP and TCP/IP settings, Configure Dialer, …” to “Stick This Thing in the Hole on your Confusion Box and Click until you see Porn and Spam.” A Zero-Knowledge-Needed access plan got people with zero knowledge to participate.
This is perfect egalitarian democracy, and the fucktards are ruining it.
Thanks for that, AOL.
March 12th, 2009 at 8:22 am
Articles like this make me glad you didn’t crack under pressure when that person who was doing your interview/meeting asked for your website. That being said, i agree that the anonymous nature of the internet lets people fly there fucktard flag a little more freely than we would like. It’s like when I’m trying to get my wife to come to bed, and she is reading posts on “the Nest”. I tell her that it’s late and we have to work tomorrow she will often reply ” Not now, someone’s wrong on the internet, i must correct this.” I then give up and go to bed without my wife.
March 12th, 2009 at 9:29 am
I thought the AS3 thing had to be the best you found. I have this idea that if you have no fucking clue how to use something, you’re best off leaving it alone until you have someone that can help you understand it. Or if you’re like me, and you learn by messing with shit, breaking it, and continuing to fuck with it until it works again. Tjenicek, obviously is not this kind of person. As for KJ…. well, I’m pretty sure that level of stupid is only legal online. Somewhere during that, he must have though he was on myspace, or maybe adult friend finder. That’s really the only explanation I can come up with.
March 12th, 2009 at 11:29 am
On a completely unrelated note, if you want to create your own blog and podcast, it’s ridiculously easy!
You can let WordPress take care of the posting, comments, access, etc., Skype will let you talk to cohosts, Audacity lets you record yourself, PowerPress will make posting shows a snap, and most hosting services take care of the rest.
It’s so nice that anyone can use those great technologies to get a site and show up and running without having to know anything about PHP, Apache, RSS, HTML, CSS, audio encoding, VOIP, …
They’ve really lowered the barrier to entry! 😀
March 12th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Which I am pretty sure is the only reason TANcast works as well as it does. I’m sure you guys could figure all the crap out eventually (or maybe you already know how?), but why bother when it’s that simple?
March 12th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
GAH! I need to work all the bugs out of this stupid add-on I’m using that stores my passwords and stuff. It keeps filling in the wrong email and I don’t even notice it! Maybe I should just delete that other email from it’s damn memory or w/e. It’s pissing me off.
March 12th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Mike, I fixed that for you.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:19 am
So Andy, what you’re saying is that this Podcasting thing is so easy, a monkey could do it?
Sure, you know, it’s easy to put the content out there, but first you must HAVE content. Even if you have the tools to create the content, well, you guys…Winston put it best towards the end of Ghostbusters. “We’ve got the tools! We’ve got the talent!”
Not everyone can say that.
Oh, and as a former software sales manager for Fry’s Electronics in Indianapolis, IN, I know what you’re talking about with the morons and software. Oh god, do I know what you’re talking about.
March 13th, 2009 at 5:54 am
Thanks, Andy. I think I’ve got the bugs worked out with the email thing, so (hopefully) that won’t happen again.
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:39 am
thanks aol love you