December 2009

Man oh man, is it cold outside. The Eastern Seaboard and the Midwest have both been buried underneath a brutal storm of ice and snow, winter weather advisories are going off every other day and everyone's pipes are so frigid that it takes ten minutes just to get a stream of tepid water in the shower. Yeah, it's pretty miserable, but ya know where it's even colder? Russia. Yes, that big, red former global superpower gets mighty chilly this time of year, which makes me feel sorry for all the folks who have to live through yet another remorseless slavic winter. That's why I'm so glad that websites like LavaPlace exist. Like so many concerned citizens of the world, I was convinced that the Internet had destroyed the age-old institution of the Russian mail-order bride service. Imagine my joy when I discovered that not only is it alive and well, but that it has expanded to other former Eastern Bloc countries as well. Why limit yourself to Russian girls when you could have a Ukrainian or a Lithuanian instead?

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It's the weekend after Christmas. All the thrill is gone, the trash is full of gaudy wrapping paper and everything seems a little less vibrant, a little less festive, a little less alive. Maybe it's the memories of your childhood slowly fading a bit more every year. Maybe it's the realization that in just five more gray days you'll be forced to reflect on the 365 shades of disappointment you just walked, only to watch 365 more bloom on the horizon. Or hell, maybe it's just the fact that, once again, you discovered only too late that you can't stand to be around your family during the holidays so you drowned the frustration in something as inherently ill-advised as brown alcohol mixed with cream, eggs and nutmeg. Whether actual or psychosomatic, you've got a Christmas hangover and all you wanted to do was surf the Net and have a laugh, except now all you've got is some cantankerous Jew who kinda hates Christmas hitting you with some crazy, androgynous Youtuber lip syncing to a ridiculous Nordic kid's song. Great. Just freaking great.

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When I was but a hopelessly jaded, obstinate teenager I attended a very small, very liberal alternative school that was more than happy to give a top-notch education to every stripe of weird kid in the district. We had free-thinking hippies, neon-haired artistes, gay kids just tiptoeing out of the closet and, of course, angry junior anarchists who were determined to fight The Man no matter who or what that actually means. One afternoon just such a bedreadlocked ruffian was attempting to sway the opinions of a 16-year-old version of yours truly concerning the merits of the band Rage Against the Machine, which was still relevant at the time. In as eloquent a way as an adolescent malcontent like myself could manage, I said that I didn't really buy Rage's rebellious anti-authority message beyond its use as a gimmick to sell records to kids who don't know any better. Well, my opinions on the matter haven't really changed, but now the band seems to have popped out of its 90's style grave to fight The Man once again via the Internet. This time, The Man happens to be Simon Cowell.

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Possibly my favorite thing about craigslist is how it creates a venue for completely irrational thinking while maintaining the illusion, or even the actual possibility, that the post might actually work. Whether it's an obviously worthless business proposition, a roundly unappealing romantic engagement or an indulgence of pure fiction, craigslist provides a market where anything, no matter how unlikely, might just come to pass. It's simultaneously sad and inspiring. After all, just because none of the following posts appeal to me personally, my last lingering shred of optimism likes the idea that they serve a small collection of strange, desperate people who really need something impossible.

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Map of the Internet. Black Space=Porn

Let's talk about the Big "F" Future. There will be personal jet packs, elevators to the moon, world hunger will be forever solved because science will have finally perfected self-replicating rice pudding technology and all people on Earth and her colonies among the stars will visit Net Insanity for all of their entertainment, news and recipes. But we've got a long way to go before we reach that glorious day. In the more immediate future, which is to say in the coming year, Net Insanity will be branching out into new territory and the world's rice pudding supply will sadly remain finite. Here's a sneak peek into what's on the docket for 2010.

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where strangeness was born

(sorry for the late update. Some technical issues ate my life yesterday)

If there's one thing I've learned about the Internet by maintaining this blog, it's that there is no medium in this world capable of matching it in sheer volume of content. Because it's so cheap and easy to produce and publish online content, it manifests in one massive, unbroken stream that runs through so many possibilities that even the most wild, unlikely topics are eventualities. There is no greater demonstration of this principle than craigslist. Over the years, it has evolved from a text-only tool for some guy and his friends to an international depository of surreal human weirdness. Even better, it has created its own quasi-culture, facilitating content that never would have even been imagined were it not for the List itself. When I first started the Craigslist Files I imagined that it would run for a few weeks before I ran out of material. A year later and there's no sign that this barreling beast will even slow down.

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Oh, how time flies when you're having deep regrets about humanity in general. As of this Thursday, Net Insanity will be a year old. We've had one full year of crazy conspiracy theories, religious fanaticism, desperate craigslisters and awful Youtube videos. There's been sickening pornography, angry teenagers and even a Japanese guy who makes musical instruments out of vegetables. To commemorate this year of analyzing the weirdest, most absurd Internet stuff I could find, I'm going to be taking this week to do a five-day retrospective of some of the best, worst and strangest stuff from among Net Insanity's 120+ articles. Today, I'd like to focus on the people who made all this content possible. These are Net Insanity's Five Favorite People.

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