Wall-E Was Right: Why I'm Pretty Sure The Internet Is Killing Us All

The internet is the worst thing to happen to humanity since the Hydrogen-bomb. You might think this is an outlandish and wildly inaccurate statement and you would almost definitely be right. But after spending almost three days straight refreshing my Facebook page and posting pictures of small animals with assorted danish pastries on their heads on Tumblr, well heck, I'm burnt out. I'd just like to point out this isn't my usual approach to the internet. Normally I ration myself to only 20 hours a day. But this week I've been avoiding doing all the work I avoided doing over Christmas. And as we all know:

Honestly if it's not a bar graph I'm lost, but some boffins at Oxford made this (probably) 
so it's science.

Sure, the internet isn't all bad. It's saved an entire generation of young men from the shame of having to buy top shelf pornography in a discreet brown paper bag of shame that may as well have “FILTHY PERVERT” scrawled all over it, because everyone knows that if your bag is opaque, you're probably a sex offender. I guess there's some other reasons why we all dig the internet and if this was a rational, balanced argument wherein I carefully weighed up the pro's and the con's, then you would get to hear them. As it stands, this is basically what you have come to expect from my blog: the over-caffeinated ravings of a wildly unstable personality. That's right, I'm going to get all Michael Moore up in this shit.

As any good polemicist knows, facts talk. So here's a fact: THE INTERNET KILLS PEOPLE. Every time you fire up your laptop you have a 90% chance of dying. You could end up being strangled by your spouse for using up all the bandwith downloading every episode ever of Come Dine With Me: Extra Portions. You could die like that guy in the internet cafe when he sat infront of his computer for twelve hours straight. You could become addicted to pornography and furiously asphixi-wank yourself into an eternal slumber. You could even get addicted to World of Warcraft and die of shame.

Common side-effects of pretending to be a pixellated troll include adult acne and eternal virginity.

And, sure, you might say, these are all easily avoidable scenarios. Just step back from they keyboard, take a ten minute break, make a cup of tea, go outside for some fresh air. But you know what? People are dumb and they will stare at a screen for seventy-eight hours straight even though their eyeballs are bleeding and they can't stop dry-heaving from the everpresent stench of their soiled jeans.

Even if you manage to use the internet without dying, don't think you're safe. The internet makes it almost impossible to avoid people. You are always just the click of a button away from someone you really don't want to deal with. That guy you accidentally sat next to on the bus once? Yeah, he's not going anywhere until you've heard all about how difficult it is seeing his mother go through chemotherapy. That girl who stole your boyfriend? She wants to Facebook chat about their sex life in exruciating detail so she can ask you 'how did you ever let that one go?!' while you sit there, your genitals nothing more than a blank neutral space because it's been so long since you've felt the touch of another human being your body automatically assumes that you are an amoeba and reproduce asexually now. Pulling a sick day? Your boss just read your Twitter feed where you spent the last six hours LOLing about how much fun you had at Sea World and how awesome shaking fins with Shamu was while the schmucks at the office toiled away, wasting their miserable lives in the mediocrity of middle management. Well guess what, you've got all the time in the world to just get out there and live, because, hey, now your unemployed and soon to be homeless. May as well buy a season pass to Sea World and drown yourself in the conga eel tank. 

I've never read Moby Dick, so if a whale busts you to your boss via G-mail, you should definitely get all Ahab on him hunt down some nautical revenge.

Do you even remember what it's like outside? I sure as heck don't. Sometimes I twitch open my curtains to peek out into the world I've half-forgotten, before scurrying back to my desk, eyes, unaccustomed to natural light, bleeding ever so slightly. I've heard talk of a time before Tumblr, but honestly, I don't remember. My life has been spent before a procession of LCD screens. If I'm not texting my friends (that's hypothetical, because I don't have friends. Mostly I text the Samaritans Suicide hotline and they send me motivational messages like 'you can do it!' and 'be brave, soon the pain will vanish'), I'm tweeting, or tumblring or watching Iplayer. Human interaction that doesn't involve a protective barrier is pretty much impossible at this point.

So, what can be done about it? Well if, like me, you believe that Pixar are actually purveyor's of chillingly accurate Nostradamus type predictions, then humanity is in for a bumpy ride. In between the lost fish and talking cars, it seems as though the human race is heading for a lifetime of immobility, the loss of vowels from the alphabet and an inability to blink. Turn on, log on and let your brains dribble from your ears and out of your skull.

This guy ruined your life.

Disclaimer: I actually really like the internet, please don't make me live in a yurt.