Welcome to the Internet

 

Well hello again yourpopfiltramps! I’d like to introduce you to our shiny new feature article: Welcome to the Internet, where I do the web surfing so you can do the couch surfing! Every other week or so I’ll be dumping the newest and best silly shit the internet has to offer right here at yourpopfilter.com. You’ll be informed on the latest memes and trending web articles and all you have to do is wade through the self-righteous ranting and pontificating that Sam Boyce is compelled to include in everything he does. Let’s get started!

 

Newest Meme: Gordon Ramsay

Real quick for those of you who might not know what a “meme” is: the word “meme” was invented by famed biologist Richard Dawkins to describe the fundamental unit of a thought or idea. It was meant to be for thoughts what genes are for living organisms: constantly evolving and interacting in different ways to produce different outcomes. Then the internet got ahold of it and now it’s used to describe stupid pictures that have text overlaid on them. The text is meant to follow the theme of the picture to generate comedic results. You usually get tired of them in about a day.

For example this meme has been trending around the web:

It features Gordan Ramsay screaming in the face of a contestant on his hit reality TV show Hell’s Kitchen with the text being a one-liner about poorly cooked food. It’s usually the sort of joke that would have been funny if a comedian had told it 90 years ago. It’s only funny now because of its juxtaposition with the irate energy you imagine Mr. Ramsay would sell it with.

 

Internet Rant: Boston Marathon edition

In the wake of the Boston Marathon tragedy several people decided they should also show the world how shitty they are and what better way to do so than on the internet. News media sources, in their struggle to be the first to break a story or just stay current with what other media outlets were publishing on their websites published some things that were, to be blunt, completely and totally un-fucking-true. This should be unacceptable to us in a fundamental way. The purpose of news media is to inform the public of things that may be outside the realm of the average persons knowledge. It’s one of those concepts that’s necessary for a functioning democracy, so you know, kinda important. When they publish things that aren’t true or are misleading they are harming our entire society. If you think that’s an exaggeration, think on this: newspapers are a primary source for knowledge, meaning historians and analysts the world around use them to build their theories and narratives. If they’re writing things that aren’t true they are screwing up everything from government policy to how this entire era of history will be viewed in the future. One of the worst offenders was The New York Post, who apparently took wild speculation and ran with it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to link to their site (and never will) but here’s animalnewyork.com calling them out.

Educated journalists weren’t the only ones touting their ignorance in the hours and days following the bombing, however. Regular, everyday schmoes like you and me were more than happy to get on Facebook, Twitter and every other social media site to show the world just what level of moron they are. One common and inexcusable mistake people made was a confusion of the Chechen Republic in the Russian Federation (also commonly called Chechnya), a once disputed area that is still a sometimes-flashpoint for terrorism and violence, with the Czech Republic, an independent nation in Eastern Europe. I know the words Czech and Chech sound pretty much the same but here’s the thing: Chech isn’t even a fucking word and there is no reason to be that fucking ignorant. Even if it were, maybe you should do just a tiny bit more digging if you’re going to call for the bombing of a country. It might end up you’re talking about a flourishing democracy that’s a member of the European Union.

I’ve got two thing to say about this and then I’ll move on. The first is a relatively small point a lot of people seemed to let slide in the face of the awesome ignorance being displayed by a person who doesn’t know the difference between two places in the world that are distinct geographically, culturally and historically but would still like for the people in one of those places to be violently killed in retaliation for an act committed by individuals who happen to be from that region: Czechoslovakia is not a country. It hasn’t been a country for a little over 20 years. Stop talking about Czechoslovakia as if it were currently a nation or state: it’s not.

My second point is a larger one. If you’re posting on a social media site then obviously you have access to the internet, if you have access to the internet then you have access to the greatest collection of human knowledge ever created: THE FUCKING INTERNET. You would be hard-pressed to come up with a piece of information that CAN’T be found on the internet. So if you’re on the internet and about to voice an opinion for all the world to see you probably have 30 seconds to make sure you have the smallest shred of an idea of what it is you are expressing that opinion about. Everyone makes mistakes but you can, at the very least, hide the fact that you’re a moron with a quick Google search every now and again.

That’s it for now folks. Here’s a gif to keep you entertained until next time.

-SB