maybe next year, maybe no go

As I mentioned a few posts back, I worked at a college library for a time in the mid-1990’s. I mostly worked evenings and weekends. Because it was located at a commuter school, things were usually dead during my shifts, especially during the summer intersession, and I spent much of my time reading up on a wide variety of subjects. (My record was four 200-page history texts in the space of eight hours.)

One of my job responsibilities was conducting periodic floor sweeps -- picking up stray books for reshelving and announcing the closing time to the sparse and scattered assortment of patrons. It was an…enlightening…task, providing a rare glimpse into a world hidden from most mortals. Every Saturday, without fail, I would find a stack of books -- typically The Story of O, Tropic of Cancer, Justine, collections of Jean Genet plays -- resting in a rank puddle of piss on the floor of the men’s room at the end of the stacks, and the shelves where the human sexuality titles were kept would be in massive disarray.

It puzzled me, and as I sat at the desk by the library’s only entrance and exit, I’d watch the various patrons come and go and wonder who the culprits were. The beefy frat boy? The skinny pockmarked techie? The fundamentalist loony who’d sneak in and try to bomb the restrooms with anti-abortion stickers and post cards? The slick-looking business professor? The possibilities were many, yet the potential pool was small, and I still wonder to this day.

(During one of my closing time sweeps, I did almost quite literally stumble across a typical backwards baseball cap “dude” who was masturbating to a 1970’s sexuality textbook in a darkened corner. The poor sap looked like a rabbit caught in a semi-truck’s headlights. I just kind of looked at the floor and said, “Library closes in fifteen minutes,” then moved on.)

Oddly enough, my above experiences in the lovely world of library science came rushing back to me this morning when I made the mistake of reading the comments section of this Yahoo Tech article on why it might be wise not to be an iPhone early adopter (read: beta tester who pays through the fucking nose for the privilege of bragging rights). It wasn’t the perv factor, but my “who the hell are these people and why are they roaming unsupervised?” reaction to these commentators that triggered the flashback.

I know:
1. It’s the internet.
2. It’s a Yahoo forum.
3. It’s the internet.

…but in a tech-oriented venue, I’d expect a wee bit more than “who gives a dam I want 1” or “The iPhone needs to be bukkaked.” (Maybe I was too quick in dismissing the perv factor.)

The spelling, grammar, and overall tenor of the responses suggests that these folks would be better suited toward Yahoo’s Basic Rudiments of Civilization forums, with such important topics as Eliminating the Randomness of Fire and Wheels Should Not Have Corners:

dypsht666: lol weelz r teh suxxor11111 and teh gay

SledmasterHavok: wheels r ineffcent and prone to errors anyone with a brian wud go with sleds and runners

As much as I try to visualize these people as living breathing human beings, I find myself thinking of them as feral and amorphous fragments of a mad god’s id, cycling through a succession of forms – the Comic Shop Guy from The Simpsons, an Insane Clown Posse fan, a howling mass of protoplasm with an Alienware rig and a thousand pseudopods – instead of functioning independent entities capable of buying a gallon of milk and some hot dog buns at Stop and Shop.

The comment thread is also heavily populated with the AAA-League Batman set, relentless crusaders against the machinations of a faceless corporation which has wronged (read: inconvenienced) them in some way or encroached on their sense on self-worth as established by identifying with a rival corporation and/or product. No corner of the internet is safe from their brand of justice, honed to mediocre standards by countless hours spent in flame war zones.

I can visualize those folks, though. They’re the ones ahead of you in line at Stop and Shop, and when asked by the cashier if they have a saver card, smugly answer “yes,” but don’t produce it because they weren’t specifically asked to. They tend to act hurt and surprised when the folks in line behind them aren’t impressed with their little semantic triumph, and instead threaten them with physical violence.

Mr. T Experience – Is There Something I Should Know? (from The Duran Duran Tribute Album, 1997) - Featuring the ever-so-quotable line, "You're about as easy as a nuclear war." That's a tad ambivalent, isn't it? Launching is easy, surviving is hard.

Toyah Wilcox – It’s a Mystery (from Anthem, 1981) - On par with Adam Ant in the "their good stuff is great, but their bad stuff will indelibly stain the very fabric of one's soul" category of performers.