The Internet Is a Horrible Place

1:20 AM March 29th

Let's look at a medium sized city as a microcosm for the world as a whole. There are streets, roads, and in the middle is the public park. On a grand scale, that public park is the internet. At first it sounds nice; a forum with few rules, different paths to explore, and new people to meet. The problems with the internet, like a public park, are inherent in the very things that make it appealing.

The park is ground zero for crazy people, everyone knows this. It's expected that when you go to the park, you might see or hear things that you wouldn't see or hear on the street. Decency takes a step down, when you enter the park. Like, the park, there are few rules on the internet. As long as you're not abusing a child or an animal, anyone can post anything. The most horrible things I've ever seen were on the internet. The internet hosts terrible, disgusting things that will never be far from my mind's eye, and will haunt my nightmares till the end of time. I curse the day that someone registered Goatse.

Anyone can visit the public park. It's an open forum to voice your opinion, or go for a walk, or hide in a bush and watch children playing. Like the park, anyone can connect to the internet. Anyone. That creepy guy in the apartment building across the street that pleasures himself when you forget to close the curtains and walk out of the shower? He's on the internet. The bum begging you for change and sniffing your used Kleenex out of the trash is down at the library, using the public computers to look up bestiality porn in public. Everyone you fear and hate is on the internet, watching what you do, and posting pictures of your children.

The park is generally not a safe place to be after dark. When it comes to big cities, this becomes a definite rule of thumb. Odds are good that you'll be accosted if you wander into the park after dark. Rapes, murder, muggings; the park plays host to all these crimes. Unfortunately, there is no day or night on the internet. You can be accosted at any time, by anyone with a link that doesn't look suspicious, but links you to a video of a woman giving birth to an octopus.

I have seen men and women having sex with horses and pigs. I have seen a man stretch his anus wide enough to stick your fist in without touching the sides. I have seen a woman give birth to an octopus, and spray a fountain of feces out of her anus in the bathtub. I am a citizen of the internet, and I have seen some shit.