Human beings do not like knowledge.  Knowledge is harder to carry than ignorance, and a human being's more primitive brain structures (the ones with the power to overrule the neocortex) are teaming with selfish desires.  Some of us satisfy primal impulses through sex, some of us crave companionship, some of us drink or smoke ourselves stupid, some crave the comfort that comes from belief in the supernatural, and some get by on having absolutely no relationship with reality what so ever - but we are all, in our own way, passifying the gods of the limbic system.

Our minds, compared to our predecessors, are empty warehouses with but a few scattered boxes of critical data.  I personally can't remember most of my friends' cell numbers without looking them up.  We like to think that in this age of information, we are better informed now than we ever have been.  And we are.  But not the way you might think.  We are more knowledgable as a species than our predecessors - but not as individuals.  Really, the Internet and the digital age are little more than an extension of our brains.  An external, USB-connected drive where we store all of the data we don't immediately use.  A pool for hoarding bits and bytes like digital pack-rats, so our primary storage device (of a much more modest capacity) has lots of free space for our applications, video games and photo library.

It's no surprise then, that intellectual responsiblity is not valued.  When you have all of the storage in the world, why bother to be scrutinous... So what if a few of our MP3 files are poor quality... Eventually, we'll go through them right?  But do we ever do that?  Do any of you actually go through your 4 terabytes of illegally downloaded MP3 and fix the improperly tagged ones, remove your poor quality rips and delete your RIAA-planted fakes... I do.  But we're a rarity, you and I.

With modern media the spread of incorrect information is almost faster than the speed of truth.  It's certainly just as prevalent.  Human beings don't like to carry knowledge, but feel the need to pass it along constantly.  Our minds are temporary staging areas.  Worker bees in a loading and unloading zone; frequently oblivious as to the content of the crates we are moving.  Most of us have decided that we don't need to process information any more - we can simply pass it on to somewhere else for processing.  Input the data, and the 'machine' - whether mechanical, or social, will do the consistency checking and store whatever's proper.

Some of us recognize the problems with this arrangement.  While the Internet could have been a wealth of knowledge, we have turned it into a cespool by allowing anyone and everyone to contribute - and failing in our responsibility to drive misinformation to the fringes.  Our network of simpletons work against us, spreading myths like a computer worm.  We never learn from our mistakes.  I can't count the number of times I've seen "lottery winnings" on Facebook, and laughed hysterically as it reminded me oh so much of the "Bill Gates will send you a dollar" email.  Most of YOU simply don't care about the chaos you create with misinformation.  You simply don't give a fuck that you're aiding in contaminating the information pool.  You all stand around, pissing in the bath tub, and then condemn the act of bathing all together as a pointless activity.  Oblivious to our fundamentally flawed logic and gross irresponsibility to uphold truth.

The problem comes full circle.  As the information pool turns a disgusting shade of yellow, people begin to question not just the data that originates in the pool - but data in general.  In a move of unspeakable paranoia, we begin to question even concepts backed by the most ridiculous amount of evidence - writing the evidence off as just more piss in the pool.  No longer are people certain that we've landed on the moon, or that the President is a United States Citizen, that we are in control of our own democracy or that accredited scientists have checked thier facts.  The pool, designed to promote the storage exchange of knowledge, turns us against knowledge as we systematically destroy its credibility and then abandon it as a worthless pasttime.

Thanks for fucking up the Internet, and the information age.

In case anyone's noticed... I haven't really been around here much. 

There was a diner I used to hang out at several times per week.  The location is inseparable from my youth and my time as a young adult.  I made out with Kelly in that booth over there.  I threw away my brand new, still-in-wrapper Evanescence CD by mistake in that trash can over there.  But as I had less and less time to hang out with friends (and less and less people I could call friends) the frequency at which I visited the diner sharply declined.  My role as alpha nerd grew less and less prominent as one by one, they moved away and at some point, I just stopped going all together.

I stopped in at that diner last weekend, feeling nostalgic.  I wanted to relive some of the magic of my younger years.  At first, everything seemed promising.  They'd recently repainted, and reupholstered.  I felt at home.  But half-way through my teriyaki chicken, the glossy veneer started to wear off.  The service was marginally better.  The tables still wobbled.  The floor tiles were still from the seventies.  The kitchen looked like a Dept of Health nightmare. 

Honestly, the food was always crap.  Expensive crap.   The service was always poor.   The seats were always in poor condition - repaired regularly with duck tape.  And I was always terrified to look in the kitchen or under the tables as I was certain the roaches that had been feeding on decade-old fryer oil and leftover gum had already evolved into a species of super-insects.  The allure of the place, even in its glory days, eluded me.

Dismayed, I finished my mediocre meal and put my feet up the way I used to and looked around.  Nothing had really changed but the paint and wallpaper.  Then it hit me.  What I missed, wasn't this place.  It wasn't the wobbly tables and the taped up seats.  It wasn't the food, or the crappy service.  What made this place special was the people I filled it with.  It was the stories Wes told us about his skanky girlfriend, and Paul's 'i just dropped ass' facial expressions.   It was the decade of drawing pictures, signing yearbooks, and playing cards.  Without the people, it was just an empty husk.

And that's kind of what's become of Xanga.  A shell of a blogging community, occasionally given some new paint and wallpaper.  No one will raise AvenueToTheReal from the dead as a hologram for a final performance.  There is an empty seat where TheBigShowatUD used to sit, and despite my sincerest efforts I am unable to make an empty seat seem nearly as interesting as BigShow made his blog entry about a visit to Wendy's.  SerenaDante never visits any more.  She's probably engaged to a European prince or something. 

Like the diner, familiar faces show up from time to time.  We nod awkwardly from across the room as if to signify that we remember one another.  I stepped on the back of that guy's shoe standing in line once, causing him stumble, slip on a wet spot on the floor and spill his coffee.  The leak in the ceiling still hasn't been fixed.  Xanga is a lot like that.  An old diner I used to hang out at with my obnoxious friends, pissing off the regular customers and whining about the shitty service and food.  The tables are wobbly, the food sucks, and the leak in the ceiling still hasn't been fixed. 

I'll probably go back there tomorrow.  I still have no idea why.