The YouTube Menagerie and their Bastard Keepers.

Readers, today Shady finds himself in the dense, sweaty jungle known as YouTube. It is a sad place filled with memorabilia of the past flogged within an inch of its life, videos meant to suck your bandwidth through it's pleasuring of your curiosity of only the most morbid and sadistic happen-stances of the world today and a gargantuan number of videos based purely and simply on the premise "Animals do the darndest things".

It is whilst wading through the marshes of YouTube Poop and trashy replies to Ke$has latest music video I found myself pondering the latter of the above options. Why are animals so entertaining? If it was a member of the human race we'd find ourselves repulsed and possibly infuriated by their similar antics. But once given that it's only some dumb animal, not only does our sympathy leave but so too our empathy. Does this make animals the best blank canvas for comedy ever?

For instance:


This, discovered within a dusty old Mayan temple filled with contorted faces of fury imprinted on to each and every gargoyle one could find, worshipped on a pedestal of aimless rage, is nonetheless hilarious. What is that cat thinking? on his shelves like that? Thinking he is some sort of tiny, feline Billy Ray Cyrus covered in hair, thrusting it's away along it's self made stage?

But people, think about it. If that guy started yelling at someone randomly, how unfunny would that be? is it because we are used to the "lol-ing" at cats we have become completely unsympathetic towards their kind and their plights? Why are we so completely disenchanted with our animal kin?

Because, folks. We are bastards.

The internet has helped information become a true freedom enjoyed by any who can access it, for now at least. I will leave my furore against such red-barrens (thanks to Damacus for this bit of cryptic naming) and inappropriate, rabbit eared speedo wearers until another time. Right now, we must scrutinise how this relentless incoming tide of information has quite possibly washed away all sense of feeling we ever had.

Exhibit A: 4chan

Why anyone has to post a picture of a pregnant horse being raped by bears dressed in waist coats and fez hats is beyond me, but I'm sure those Betards at 4chan have already got 3 threads devoted to it. Trolls are mythical internet creatures which seek to ruin everything you have ever thought. Forever. These Trolls do this by making obscene images mixed with similarly obscene phrases. Perhaps they feel a need to uphold Rule 43. Perhaps 4chan are our saviours of free speech. Perhaps they have connected every PC throughout the world to take over the better part of our 1st world countries and spread the freedom of speech.

Or maybe they are all bored 12 year olds with too much time on their hands, simply the modern day parallel of a kid with a magnifying glass over an ant hill. Either way, they continue to desensitise us further with their photo shopping abilities and general trolling attitudes. They hammer on the heavy ornate doors of ur minds fortress of righteosness, slowly eroding at our walls like acid rain, perpetuating the never-ending flow of racist cats, dogs, bears, courage wolves and poke-parents that slowly invade and inhabit every space of our internet consciousness.

4chan. It's the kryptonite to our web-superman.

Exhibit B: Facebook

This follows on from the very cool Liutenant Renji and her post on the problems with Facebook. Eventually, it is inevitable the shouting box that is Facebook will eventually bottle-neck enough irrelevant problems from irrelevant people into your mind that you cease to notice them. You stop posting on that birthday girls wall, you stop replying to the suicide messages, the messages of anguish, the break-up sadness that envelopes so many adolescent girls who can no longer pester the boy who dumped her and so equally shares it among her internet "friends".

You stop interacting with people who have problems that they broadcast.

If this was real life, you'd be looking a bit jaded by now wouldn't you?

Exhibit C:onclusion?

Perhaps this is the whole point though. Perhaps your internet self is not your real self. Do we have harder persona's that preclude our far more fragile self from the dangers of the internet? Is it a detachment method in which we act like the proverbial Batman to our inner Robin? The Mario to our Peach? The Condoleeezza Rice to our flimsy George W. Bush? Of course, without it we would become embittered and completely lacking in our trust of fellow beings around us. How can we trust those who don't think for themselves, but participate in meaningless, anonymous and ultimately stupid memes intended to insult and breed fear, misapprehension and hate?

Men In Black put it perfectly:

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

To save our Person, we must protect it from People.

Another slice of unimportant and ultimately aimless babble from me folks,
This has been Shady.

Also, I don't understand the obsession with cats.
Goats are much better.