JA Westenberg in Elk: "All we did was give stupid people fas..."

All we did was give stupid people faster access to other stupid people and now we act surprised when the stupidity compounds

March 13, 2026 at 10:16:04 AM

And now it's even faster with 5G!

And some of the people didn't like that, they said it would cook insects and scramble their already scrambled brains.

beautifully said my beloved

internet access should start with 1 year of reading Wikipedia followed by 1 year of Talk pages followed by 1 year of contributions. Then another year of reading, then Talk, then contributions (it just keeps repeating—no one leaves Wikipedia).

Bang on

and yet... back in 1990 I was thinking that everyone would connect and be exposed to all the good info/culture/ideas.

Why did all the crap get boosted when all the good was there for the taking?

It can't be coincidence that I can pinpoint the moment I thought things were suddenly heading suckward - it was when everyone wanted to join Facebook, closely followed by Google buying up a bunch of services and merging all my accounts on them.

I was heavily into internet-enabled phones before "smartphones" became a thing, and again saw my hopes dashed when everyone jumped onto WhatsApp.

"Peak internet" was when only informed/clever people managed to make web-pages and the label "content creator" was yet to be invented as a job title (blame the MBAs).

At that time I recall the stream of late Friday [dirty]-joke faxes, spending rolls of expensive thermal paper, from the people who hadn't figured out the Internet...

they can have the stupid. I just want their backend and protocols.

- And give them the biggest boot in the rear as they get kicked out of the building