Smugopedia As An Answer to Inter-Pricks

puh-rikI'm mostly in favor of the integration of innovation into our everyday lives. I'm one of those people who gets a warm, tingly feeling from the use of video screens to advertise things on city streets and the fact that regular people get to walk around with personal GPS maps that would have made high-ranking military officials wet themselves just 15 years ago. Though the technological advancement of everyday life comes at a price. Because the way we communicate with each other changes over time, each generation has to essentially re-learn even the most basic social skills in a new and increasingly disconnected context. Furthermore, as gadgets ostensibly make our lives easier, they also make our baseline comfort more dependent on the complex products of society rather than what grows naturally in the world. But really, neither of these things are particularly annoying, even if they can have serious implications for our future as a species.

The most irritating aspect of new tech is that a certain percentage of people seem incapable of integrating it into their lives gracefully. Today just about everyone knows some prick who walks around with a bluetooth in his ear all day long regardless of whether or not he's actually using it, whips out his smartphone at the slightest provocation and generally acts like a superior twat because all of this hardware makes him feel like the master of all knowledge. I imagine that every tribe of early hominids had a similar prick who walked around with a flaming stick 24/7 and put an absurd amount of accessories on his loin cloth.

Perhaps the biggest culprit in creating self-important techno-jerks on early 21st century Earth is Wikipedia. I know I rag on that site and its moderately douchey spokesman Jimbo Wales a lot, but that mockery comes from a place of high expectations. I think of Wikipedia the way a father must think about his bratty teenage son. I see so much potential in Wikipedia and I genuinely believe it could be one of the best things to ever happen to the world. I just don't understand why it clings to its immature fascinations and keeps company with so many bad influences. Wikipedia, like Youtube and craigslist, would be a shining example of human achievement if it weren't for all of the stupid crap it tolerates. This all-inclusive philosophy has given modern techno-pricks the illusion that they are well-informed and their opinions on just about any topic are valid and appreciated. I don't care how forward-thinking you are, it has always been and will always be rude and annoying to access Wikipedia or any other source of information during a dinner conversation, especially to say "I told you so". And when Wikipedia is your source, there's a not-insignificant chance that said "I told you so" is wrong to begin with.

That's why I wholeheartedly approve of Smugopedia, a sadly neglected and infrequently visited satire site that skewers this kind of juvenile, quasi-intellectualism. Smugopedia forgoes all of the actual hard data to which Wikipedia aspires in favor of providing readers with pre-rendered opinions on a variety of arbitrary topics. Want a pithy opinion about the relative merits of Princeton University without actually having to, ya know, learn anything about Princeton through reading or real-life experience? Smugopedia's got you covered. Unfortunately, nobody has really contributed much to Smugopedia since 2008 despite the fact that it's exactly the kind of thing Internet people love. That's why I want to encourage you readers to create your very own Smuggies and upload them to Smugopedia. The world needs its satire, especially for those things that have been permitted to exist without due ridicule.