I Hate Websites That Suck

It seems that in this age, everyone is required to have some sort of web presence. Even if it’s just to tell everyone what your name is, that you have a cat and you like listening to the Jonas Brothers. Everyone has a Facebook page. I don’t even know what happened to MySpace, but it has very clearly been supplanted to the far less flashy Facebook. Everyone has a Twitter, from which they let all of their followers know exactly what they’re doing all day long, every single day. The ridiculousness of all this is getting ridiculous. And there’s your opening paragraph.

First of all, no one cares about you and your stupid cat. No one cares that you like Justin Bieber and James Blunt. You don’t need to take up space on a web server hard drive somewhere just to tell people about your pathetic existence. Nor does anyone care that you’re STANDING IN LINE AT PIGGLY WIGGLY AND IT’S TAKING FOREVER OMG LOL WTF!!!!1 Do something useful with your life. Take down your stupid alliteratively titled website (e.g. Hannah’s Heaven, Carol’s Closet, Mykynzy’s Mansion) and post instead, something useful.

How about turning your shitty site into a HAVEN of HELPFUL HINTS or some other such nonsense? For real, at least it could be a repository of something useful from which someone might actually benefit! I find those all the time when I’m looking for help with Linux commands or attic fan installation or odometer rollbacks on a 1979 Plymouth… Even if you only ever post one helpful item on it, it’s more useful than the insipid page that never changes telling the world about your worthless cat.

Sigh. I did just get through saying that you should put information on the web that could help people. But how about some quality control? In my search the other day for a watch case, I went looking for suggestions on maybe how to build one because they’re all so over-priced. And I came across this gem. So here’s the basic run-down of what they’re saying on this helpful site:

How to Build Your Own Watch Case

  1. Draw out plans
  2. Build it using your plans

:|

Seriously? Thanks guys, I would have never thought of that. What genius came up with that elegant template?

As many good sites as I come across that are extremely useful and kick ass, there are equally as many terrible ones that are about as useful as solar-powered flashlights. And they’re usually posted in bulk on some wanna-be site that takes quantity over quality. The instructions are usually recursive in some way, and make about as much sense as an empty gum-ball machine.

How to Mow Your Lawn

  1. Start your lawn mower
  2. Mow the lawn

It makes me want to pull my hair out. And I’m not talking about the hair on my head. Nohoho, friends! The hair on my back! It’s like they just want to build these sites to get traffic so they can… So they can what? Tell people how many visitors they get? Visitors who leave angrier than when they got there? Listen, you wanna-be web developers: if you’re building a how-to helpful site, people are usually already frustrated by the time they get there. They’re not visiting it to kill time. Or to plan. They’re trying to find where they went wrong because they tried starting the project without any kind of direction or plan.

Okay. Maybe not everyone. But I know I’m not the only one who does that.

And before you try throwing this back on me, let me answer for it: I don’t claim to have a helpful, how-to website. I write reviews, rants and requiems here. It could be called useful to some, entertaining to others, but it definitely has its place. I fully and strongly support e/n sites and blogs, so long as you’re not only telling people about your cat in every post. Or telling people you just got back from the Blockbuster and oh your god, you’re so tired and you’re about to eat some Fruity Pebbles and watch Twilight. Trust me, people. All your friends who click the “Like” button on your Facebook posts where you’ve said such things… They’re all as vapid and useless as your status update.

We should all take note how stupid we are becoming. And how technology is getting smarter while it dumbs us down and makes us lazier. This is why I said the movie Idiocracy is more like a documentary of our future than a science fiction movie. Get off the internet, people! Go outside! See some sunshine! And yes, you can take the iPod with Justin Bieber music on it. And yes. You can even take your stupid cat.

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. mrs.isaacks

    I agree for the most part – sometimes it’s fun to scroll through the comments on facebook and see what people are up to but at the same time I wonder…why would they take the time to post this crap? Yes, the posts about their frustration with waiting in line and whatnot – Do you not have any friends that you can CALL and vent to? Why do you feel the need to tell a bunch of people that you don’t really talk to in real life anyway? What makes you think they would care that you are standing in line all pissed off? I don’t get it. Just don’t get it.

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