Anyway, I wanted to ring in the new year by saying "Thank you" to all of those kind people of the internet who help me every day, from when I google questions about my ridiculous eye health, read a huge 50+ page long walkthrough to help me get past a monster in Resident Evil 4, to when I've procrastinated (as usual) on an assignment and need a book summary and symbol analysis via Wikipedia.
Most of all, I appreciate the many millions of meme creators, the people who make me smile when I feel down, or am too awake to sleep but too tired to focus on reading anything legit and instead peruse Knowyourmeme.com and my favorite Twilight Sucks tumblrs.
During one of my excruciatingly boring classes last semester, I was trolling the web and found a gem called "Sad Keanu".
I could barely contain my laughter, and after I found even more, I actually burst and nearly choked, and covered my sobs of laughter with coughing noises.
Then after laughing my poor lungs to death I found its counterpart, "Happy Keanu".
With things like this floating on the internet, how could anyone be depressed??
Everything from great YouTube videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYpwAtnywTk) to huge databases of guitar, bass, drum, and piano tabs like ultimateguitar.com; from the Lara Croft cosplay sites with links to costume accessories and how-tos on making your own to the 1,280,000,000 (literally) google search results for "how-to"; from the memes on 4chan to the insane clips featured on tosh.o and original videos by Collegehumor (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyTSOCnr2Rw)... everything you need and more is at your fingertips on the internet.
Sites like Mediafire (I LOVE YOU!!!) and the various torrent engines like ThePirateBay and isohunt allow anyone to obtain mp3s, m4as, audiobooks, pdf books, Kindle books, movies, television shows, and anything else in digital format. FOR FREE.
I can take any Youtube mp3 or video using a conversion site I just google for. FOR FREE.
I can listen new music tuned to my tastes on Pandora. For FREE.
I network with all of my friends on Facebook. For FREE.
I watch my favorite J-drama on mysoju.com FOR FREE.
I could go on for days with all the things I can do on the internet. The only thing it can't do is feed me, and I figure that one day that will change as well.
These people labor over walkthroughs, organizing all of the details and writing sequentially, making extensive lists and even FAQs; they compress files and risk life and liberty getting bootlegs of movies and other copyrighted materials so that they can not only use them personally but to make them available to everyone else in the world with internet access. They could keep their swag to themselves, but they take time and risk being tracked down to disperse their goodies with me. FOR FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
My questions to you are, what have you contributed to the internet today?
Have you thanked those anonymous, unpaid (even if they are paid, you're not paying them) miracle workers who give you your daily fix of humor, knowledge, and support whenever you need it?
If you haven't, I suggest you do it now.
THANK YOU KIND PEOPLE OF THE INTERWEBZ.
A final meme for you all:
Happy New Year!
