The Internet Is Like A Sackful Of Chickens

An entirely condescending introduction to the world wide web

You might want to sit down and take a deep breath before reading the rest of this sentence, because by the time you reach the little punctuation mark at the end, it means that you have successfully connected to the Internet.

Yes, I'm totally serious. You’re using it right now. The Information Superhighway. Cyberspace. The military computer network formerly known as. The World Wide Web. Yes, sort of like The Matrix, but a bit less Keanu Reeves and a lot more Laurence Fishburne.

Of course it’s OK to be excited.

The first thing you should know is that your amazing new Inter-majiggy doesn't really have much of a user manual. Well technically it does, but the current version consists of about one hundred million pages loosely scattered all over the world, decorated with epilepsy endorsed animations or pictures of cats, and written in languages that people without technopathy implants can’t understand.

Sounds awesome right?

Well it is, and that’s why we’re here. So before you go strapping yourself back into that Gamma Wave Stimulator you bought from the nice bloke on the telly, here’s your very own personalised introduction. It was made especially for you, and it’s yours to keep foreverever.

You’re welcome of course.

Once we've covered the basics, you'll be chewing the bandwidth faster than I can email photos of unusually shaped testicles to the same Hotmail address you'll later spend years begging Microsoft to cancel; but we’re probably jumping ahead of ourselves a little bit now. Take as much time as you need, and we can get started whenever you reach the next full stop.

See? You’re getting the hang of this already.

The Internet is like a sackful of chickens.

It’s cruel. It’s complicated. It’s awkward to conceal at work. Some people would be far better off not knowing anything about it, and to stick your face inside while pouting like a forlorn vagina would be desperately unwise. Although The Internet can indeed be used to whip up a most outstanding pine nut meatloaf, it is worth remembering that no matter how outstanding, pine nut meatloaf never tastes quite the same once you've had your lips pecked off by a thousand angry beaks of swift vengeance.

The world is not connected to your computer.

Your computer is connected to the rest of the world. The difference between the two might seem subtle, but that’s because it is. Even really smart people get confused thinking about it. Don’t be like the really smart people who get confused, just know that the Internet doesn't give two half fucks about the top names for your family station wagon, that really clever thing you said to some bloke at the shops, or the astonishing firmness of your newborn’s recent stool. If you find this difficult to accept, by all means go right on ahead and build yourself a personal web page. People all over the world will snidely smile themselves to sleep at night because of your selfless martyrdom. You will be the Patron Saint of Why The Fuck Would Anyone Ever Do That Dot Com, and acolytes will worship you from afar.

If something isn't working it’s probably your fault.

Unless you have reliable experience, information or expert advice to suggest otherwise, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re to blame. Whether you clicked the wrong button, didn't read the on-screen message, collected something untoward at dirtymanbagsniffers.com, or backed over your keyboard parking the company tank, it really doesn’t matter. Fact is, you’re not going to make friends and influence people with the old ‘my computer broke itself’ routine. People know you’re lying. You know you’re lying. People even know that you know you’re lying, so just come clean and maybe somebody useful will stop thinking about the weekend for just long enough to help out.

There are people on the Internet who don’t like you.

Look, we get that you’re fun to be around and everything, but the Internet is a pretty big place. Sooner or later, you’re going to discover that some of the nearly 2.1 billion people online think you’re a complete wanker and wouldn't dribble piss on you if they had a leaky bladder stapled to their face following one too many vodkas. You may also discover that these same people are incapable of typing using lower case letters, proudly tout slogans popular with white supremacists, and only became your Facebook friend because they wanted to bang your older sister. Whatever the case, don’t let it upset you. These things happen, and it helps us grow as people.

So that just about covers the basics.

But seeing as you've actually read all the way to the bottom, we have just one more morsel to offer before riding off into the wild grey yonder:

When providing IT support for the rude, ignorant, demanding and unappreciative, writing a passive-aggressive article about understanding The Internet can really be quite rewarding.