The Internet is a Vile Place

The Internet is a vile place. And I’m not just talking about the horrifying abundance of sexual content, some of it so mesmerising and twisted that all you can do is sit rigidly with wrapt attention, experiencing a profound sense of sickening wonderment at the fact that the acts unfurling before your very eyes were thought up by someone you share a species with. No. I’m talking about you. You make it vile. People ‘just like you’.

You know the drill. You have a presentation/essay/proposal/triple-heart by-pass operation that you should, in all honesty, be preparing for and so, inevitably it seems, you are ‘surfing the net’ to the irritating tune of your own illegitimate procrastination. As the deadline looms you become increasingly melodramatic and prone to straw clutching, woeful fits in which you convince yourself that you are the only person in the entire world who has work to do. Everyone else is on a beach somewhere in your head, sipping margaritas and smoking Cuban cigars, not even giving a thought to the fact that you (you and only you) are currently sinking into the depths of despair as you feel the cold but oddly comforting embrace of knowing (oh how you know!) that you are the most unfortunate man/woman/eunuch in the universe at this dismal moment in time. This is your life, you think, and my God is it horrific.

Before you manage to find the razor and get yourself out of whatever blown-out-of-all-proportion state you have found yourself in, though, a thought hits you. Perhaps suicide is a bit dramatic, you think. Perhaps, in fact, suicide is a very silly thing to do indeed. No doubt highly embarrassing, come the next morning (in the after life), when the absurdity of killing yourself because you didn’t want to do an essay becomes fully apparent. No. There must be another way. Doing it perhaps? No. Something else.

And there it is, staring you in the face, right there on the screen in front you. It’s someone else’s face. Someone, according to the advert, who is just like you. Or who used to be like you anyway, but who is now no longer debased with such a comparison. Someone who, like you, used to put up with the bump and grind of the existential malevolence you call your life. But not anymore. Oh no! Now they have transcended the rat race that you and your ignorant ways are still entrenched in. They have drunk from the cup of success and are no longer bound to your pedestrian coil. They are new and improved and completely superior to the mere likes of you. You can see it in their smug smiles and beady, little, gleaming eyes. You can feel it in your gut, twisting with bitterness and envy, as you realize that these conceited bastards are sipping those margaritas and smoking those Cuban cigars while you stress and delay over the work you are supposed to be doing.

But fear not, loathsome creature, for they used to be ‘just like you’ and, it is promised, you can grow to become ‘just like them’. To hammer home this point you are subjected to torturous demonstrations and banal personal statements along the lines of this: Carol, 33, was bored of office life. She wanted to be her own boss, but didn’t know how to go about it. Thanks to this course, Carol is now master of her own life and bathes in champagne while you wake up at six in the morning to go to whatever job has managed to depress you enough for you to consider spending your hard earned cash on this blatant and unashamed money making enterprise. Not convinced? Neither was Carol!
“I wasn’t convinced at first!” says Carol, gurning in her photo like a right little trollop, “But this course genuinely works! Like you, I used to dream of being independent. Now I make my own decisions and earn more money while doing so! Since I signed up for this course I work from home and manage my own deadlines. The sun shines out of my arse and my faeces are plated in gold. My urine is lemonade and every second Wednesday doves fly through my window to deliver me a substantially more appealing salary than yours! Sign up for this generic Internet con now and you could be just like me!’

By now it’s all you can do to choke back the tears. The deadline is looming and you still haven’t done the work. Well, at least you don’t have to listen to Carol babble on about her peachy existence anymore do you? Wrong. You do. As if not convinced with flaunting her uppity self-congratulations at you, she now wishes to urinate on your barbeque and point out just how shit your life really is. She shows you her bank statements as ‘proof’ that this ‘innovative’ and ‘liberating’ course is worth the buck you sweat blood and tears to earn. And those bank statements are better than yours! The money roles in for the sweetness and light that is you new favourite resentment, Carol, in all of her irritating glory. The tears are getting harder to fight back now; all sense of justice and decency in the world has been eroded. You look on with self-pitying horror at the vile figures taunting you with their unashamed extravagance. She. Earns. More. Money. Than. You. And she doesn’t have an essay/presentation/proposal/military coup to be doing. What a bitch. A bitch ‘just like you’.