Something happened to this blog starting around a year ago. This used to be a place where we could all get together and laugh at stupid, crazy things on the Internet and inevitably invite the ire of those who, for some reason, think those stupid, crazy things are true and wonderful. Ah, but then the Internet had to start getting respectable. It had to start fueling revolutions, changing the way people learn and do business, contributing an almost disproportionate amount of weight to politics and other such not-at-all-funny things. I don't regret the tone of Net Insanity turning dry or, dare I say, serious, though I do occasionally miss the days when it was just me, you readers and some harmless crazy person shouting into a bloggy void. There's plenty of real-world news surrounding the Internet this very day (simultaneous protests coordinated across thousands of miles, the continued PR flailing of Netflix) but I'm not going to talk about that stuff for this week's Monday column. No, today we're going old school with a new but comfortably familiar blog called Bethelen Circle.

Bethelen Circle is the kind of thing that used to be the bread and butter of Net Insanity. It's a space for one confused individual (in this case a person named Mikaeel Mitchell) to air a wide variety of conspiracy theories and predictions about the future that are based on wonderfully misinformed perceptions. As of today there are only two posts on BC, but Mitchell seems to be setting up a pattern of posting a new rant on the 29th day of every month, so we'll see what happens in two weeks.

Now, to get a rough picture of the kind of logic that drives BC, we need only look to the blog's logo. The keen observer will note that it is, in fact, a pentagon. Mikaeel Mitchell isn't stupid, though. He acknowledges in the About section that his blog's logo is an entirely different shape than the one mentioned in his blog's name. He explains that the word "circle" was chosen to reflect 15 qualities like "Focus" and "Womb", many of which are effectively synonyms, and that the pentagon was chosen to reflect the five senses (though apparently nobody told Mitchell that there are technically many more than five senses to begin with). This provides a nice frame of reference for the rest of the site. It's not mere unfiltered crazy, it's what happens when a thoughtful but easily distracted person gets some wrong ideas and runs with them enthusiastically.

The first post on BC is a brief but dense buffet of standard conspiracy theories. It trots out 2012 paranoia, New World Order predictions and a quick reference to the Illuminati. It also tells readers that they can be some of the few to survive the vague, impending disaster by going to safe houses in one of five locations throughout the world, except Mitchell doesn't actually say where these locations might be.

But that first post is just a trifle. The much longer, more delightfully crazy post from September is where the real fun starts. It's a seven-point case for the idea that the stereotypical "Grey" aliens are actually humans visiting us from the future. The seven points are, in brief:

1. Greys only have four fingers and SCIENCE!!! says that the human pinky will cease to exist because we're not doing as much manual labor as we used to.
2. SCIENCE!!! says that humans are evolving to have less body hair, which explains why Greys are hairless.
3. The rise of digital technology like texting somehow equates with the supposed ability of Greys to communicate telepathically.
4. Grey sightings often take place during major historical events and so Greys are obviously humans from the future who have finally mastered time travel, which is a technology that scientists have apparently been seriously trying to develop since ever.
5. Modern humans experience vision degradation because of our lives in front of computer and TV screens, which is why the Greys wear massive, black contact lenses in their giant eyes.
6. UFOs are clearly the descendants of Stealth Bombers.
7. And the kicker: The apparent sexlessness of Greys is the result of the mutation SCIENCE!!! has identified in the Y chromosome. Men just ain't manly anymore, which is the result of feminism, and the changing chromosome will force men to somehow procreate with one another, resulting in the disappearance of women altogether and the creation of a genderless species that needs to go back in time to steal eggs from human women.

Yeah, sometimes I miss the crazy conspiracy sites of Net Insanity's old days. I know sites like Bethelen Circle will always be around, but they've become less the tone of the Internet as each month passes. The days of innocence are over, folks. Our favorite technology is growing up.