The Internet is a playground.

What comes to mind when you think of a playground ?

Perhaps it’s the really tall twirly slide, along with childhood memories of climbing the outside of it, ascending the corkscrewed tower like a gecko climbing a tree, instead of sliding down it. Or perhaps you were more of a swings kind of guy or the jokester obsessed with pantsing his friends or more inclined to chase girls and pull their pigtails or swing from the monkey bars or play hide-and-go-seek or climb to roof of the tallest structure and imagine that you were King of the Castle.

It’s also possible that you remember the playground as the place where you first tested yourself against the world, where you found out how strong you were relative to your peers. Sure, there was the classroom, where you could score higher grades on tests or complete the mad minute math contests the fastest out of anyone, but everyone still understood the unspoken truth that the playground was where the rubber hit the road, where dominance was its most indisputable.

This, in a nutshell, is the Internet.

We still tease the girls.i
We still gossip.ii
We still climb the equipment.iii
We still punish the stupid kids for being stupid.iv
We still play pranks on each other.v
We still make bets with one another.vi
And of course, we still separate the lemma from the palea.vii

We might’ve grown up, but there’s no outgrowing this playground.

[Tip of the cap to David Thorne for unwittingly providing the title of this article, which I cribbed from one of his books because not only is he right on this account, he’s hilarious ! So Mr. Thorne, if you’re reading this, drop by -assets (webchat link) sometime, wouldja ? Your sense of humour would be nowhere more at home.]
___ ___ ___

  1. Show us your boobies !
  2. Whether its on IRC or by PGP.
  3. We just bounce around on a different kind of pogo now.
  4. It’s all well and good if the stupid kids stick to doing stupid things, you’d have to be cruel to punish one of them for trying to fit a frog up his nose, but the stupid kids who try get a little too big for their breeches deserve a good and proper whack. And a good and proper whack we shall oblige them.
  5. Look no further than kako’s priceless April Fool’s joke this year. Seriously, how does he come up with this shit ? This even beats sending pizza to your enemy’s house.
  6. Of course, you win some, you lose some.
  7. On the technological side, this means avoiding Belladonnas. On the social side, this means the WoT.

5 thoughts on “The Internet is a playground.

  1. Mitchell says:

    Felt nostalgic reading that. I feel like I’m on a roundabout, going around another one of life’s loops.

    Thanks Pete!

  2. […] independence from the American Empire. I mean, why throw away a good day just because some kids at the playground happened to borrow it for a minute ? It’s not like Jesus invented Easter. Besides, every […]

  3. […] as I do in a sort of parallel universe, what with the Internet and all, and interacting with meatspace only selectively as I do – lest my soul be ripped out through […]

  4. […] were eating or drinking all over your monitor. Ya, I dun really get wtf is going on here either. Go Internet! […]

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