Like almost everything in today’s world, the internet is the direct result of hands responding to the wishes and desires of humanity. Early on, we noted with ever-growing interest the gradual infiltration of digital technology into almost all facets of hands existence. For a long time, we weren’t sure what value these machines would be to humans, but we’ve also become used to having hands innovate something unexpected (you’re such clever creatures!) and for its true purpose to take awhile to reveal itself. And so it was with computers. We eventually realized that computing power could be increased exponentially by finding a way to link every computer to every other computer thus creating an electronic version of humanity’s collective consciousness (see Entry 2). And so we began fashioning hands such that eventually the internet came into being. With the development of the so-called “cloud” a large step towards achieving that collective objective (as it were) has been taken, though much remains to be done before hands share a collective consciousness such as that shared by humans (and ours will always be far superior to a collective consciousness enabled by microchips—just saying).

In any case, our goal for the internet has pretty much been realized in that such a large amount of internet real estate is devoted to humans (yes, there’s also a lot about hands and their peculiar habits, but that was to be expected: even we would not go so far as to insist that the internet be only and completely about humans—okay, granted, we would go so far, if we thought there was some chance of our position prevailing, but we also know how to pick our battles). Admittedly, there have been some unintended consequences. While we fully expected an internet filled with evidence of humanity’s transcendence, we weren’t prepared for all the “counter-evidence,” all the silly, embarrassing, humiliating, and often completely fake anecdotes, photos, and videos of humans at less than their best (allegedly!—in truth, we suspect a lot of PhotoShopping, CGI, and deceptive editing is going on). We find this distressing.

With reference to Entry 10, imagine what it would be like if a deity were only known for their worse moments, like, say, sending a flood that wiped out every creature on earth, or like trying to leap up on the kitchen counter to catch the Evil Red Dot of Distraction only to suffer a slight success deficit, much to the amusement of some hands who might have been witnesses, as well as having some sort of nefarious relationship with the Evil Red Dot of Distraction, though the exact nature of their connection remains unclear (this last example is purely hypothetical; we don’t know anyone to whom this has actually happened). If this type of thing were the only thing you knew about a deity, wouldn’t it be more difficult to respect that deity properly? At the very least, one’s perspective could be skewed in a less than favorable direction. Thus, humanity’s conflicted reaction to the internet: we’re proud of what our hands-fashioning accomplished overall, but sometimes—and this is hard for us to reveal—the internet hurts our feelings. Yes, we can laugh at ourselves. To a point. Frankly, we think that point was reached long, long ago. Enough is enough.

We also realize that our protest is futile, that most hands who read this post will smile and chuckle indulgently about the “cute kitty with hurt fee-fees,” but if we thought all hands were unreachable and irredeemably ignorant, we wouldn’t have started this blog in the first place. This plea for the proper use of the internet, for the purging of content that unfairly disparages humans, for the inclusion of more human-positive material will only be appreciated by the most highly evolved and sensitive hands, and for them these words: Knock it off already! Show a little respect! Quit taking our name in vain! Sheesh.

Æ