I am not alone!
I used to think that I was the only smart individual on the scene.
I was under the impression that I was the only intelligent one in the room.
I felt justified in reasoning that I was the only person on the planet capable of getting through life without making any mistakes, without slipping up, without losing my concentration for just a moment, without fumbling the ball – without making a costly error.
But I was wrong!
See?
Not only was I living in a universe built on an erroneous assumption, but I have discovered that there are people out there who are even better than I am.
It turns out that there are thousands – perhaps millions – of people who never make any mistakes at all.
There may even be billions of them – people who make not even the tiniest error of assuming that they are alone in their perfection.
Indeed, the internet is teeming with people who are loaded to the gills with perfection.
They thrive on their perfection and the perfection of (carefully selected!) others.
They and their perfect companions have so much communally cultivated perfection in them that they are veritably overflowing with their righteous indignation.
They’re full of it!
Just post a story about someone who has inadvertently slipped up and caused something to happen.
Something bad.
Something good.
Something mediocre.
Funny is good.
Pain is better.
But it doesn’t really matter.
(Important Note: Do not post such a story about yourself, unless you have a thick skin and are able to withstand the wave of Internet Outrage that will inevitably sweep over you… if anyone notices, that is, and you don’t simply become a part of the tide of information flotsam and jetsam that fills most of the trillions of pages of detritus that pervades the medium, and you slip into the natural obscurity of pre-internet humanity.)
If your post is noticed, and the information it conveys is sufficiently abhorrent (such as a video of a girl with her dress tucked into the back of her pantyhose, or a guy tripping on a crack in the sidewalk) but premature or lacking in enough detail for anyone to develop a reasoned understanding of what really happened, just watch the self-righteous comments fly.
Okay, those things are chuckle-worthy (although I’m not sure I understand why someone wouldn’t tap such a girl on the shoulder and explain her modest faux pas instead of pulling out a smart phone and tossing some footage of the unconscionable error – the grievous assault on fashion – onto Facebook).
But just watch the comments grow like a slimy mould under the post.
The girl probably should have taken a steak knife into the ladies room and slashed a few throats there, instead.
She would have garnered more sympathy.
And for heaven’s sake don’t let anyone catch you being robbed or beaten or allowing yourself to become in any way victimized.
Somehow, in the topsy-turvy world that is the internet, the greatest sin is to be a victim.
Victims are the real perpetrators.
Victims are their own fault.
Internet society abhors victims.
Even more than the rest of us.