The Wonder Called the Internet

So many times we hear about the dangers and downfalls of the internet-time consuming, pornographious, trivial, you can really take any angle. And they're all true. But there's more truth. The internet is really an astounding phenomenom.
Back in the day, protests were limited to however many people you could fit in one city square, as many posters you could create, as many flags you could lay hands on. And we still see that. But for every physical protester there's somebody sitting in the relative safety of their bedroom, laptop balanced on their knees, fingers tapping out a well worded comment.
The internet is chatting with your best friend who moved away seven years ago via gmail.
The internet is lonely teenage girls projecting their feelings onto facebook for anybody to gawk at.
The internet is one very stupid guy confessing to murder on an anonymous secret sharing website.
It's a BBC reporter's interview with Joseph Kony, that scummy general in Uganda who has been forcing children into his army for the past two decades.
It's average people sitting in front of their webcams with their take on the Ugandan civil war.
It's a tribute to a favorite cartoon character with dozens of clips and striking background music.
It's some rather stupid but simultaneously funny videos of an orange somehow enabled to talk.

Even his face is annoying.

The internet is a collection of teenagers reenacting the Cornucopia scene from Hunger Games and getting very carried away with the fake blood.
It's yahoo users posting cynical comments on articles, somehow finding a way to relate absolutely anything to Obama, liberals, the 99%, and their personal loathing of the Kardashians.
It's a Canadian kid with a high voice but some degree of talent uploading his music on youtube and then going on to Hollywood.
It's parody videos, fan clubs, hate clubs, and a failed attempt by hackers to send that same Canadian kid to North Korea.

It's a chain email of that Canadian kid and his long lost twin in the Amazon rainforest.
It's instructions on everything from painting flowers on your nails to surviving a zombie apocalypse.
It's a webpage to commemorate victims of 9/11.
It's up to the second updates on world wide conflicts and the ones happening right in your neighborhood.
It's a fifteen year old girl staying up till midnight for the course of several days, brainstorming and researching and editing and polishing a blog post.
Once upon a time, the only people who could make a splash were journalists, generals, celebrities, politicians, leaders of popular uprisings or charities. Big people. The internet empowers everybody. I'm making a little ripple right now sitting at my family PC.
So can you.

The internet is everything.