*Which means it's probably a marketing ploy for something.

Not that we blame Berners-Lee for these things ... okay, okay, we do. The 20 worst things about the World Wide Web:

• 1. Julia Allison
• 2. Twitter
• 3. Jason Calacanis
• 4. Wikipedia
• 5. Henry Blodget
• 6. Dave Winer
• 7. Blogs
• 8. Dead newspapers everywhere
• 9. Congressman Jared Polis
• 10. Robert Scoble
• 11. The Pets.com sock puppet, and Michael Ian Black's subsequent career
• 12. Digg
• 13. Perez Hilton
• 14. /b/
• 15. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales's love life
• 16. Oversharing
• 17. Mark Zuckerberg
• 18. Chris Crocker
• 19. Internet commenters
• 20. Kevin Rose

We realize they weren't in your original spec, Timbo, but you should have anticipated them. Really.

From IHateHaters.blogspot.com

Saturday, October 30, 2004
Yeah, a 1st
Yo , so this is a first
i got so goddamn bored i created a feeling sharing webpage
well guess wat
im very bored
but if u think im worth talking to ...
then send three supreme pizzas to 6000 Pensylvania Avenue , Washington D.C
nah jks

so...yea watevr

And from ImagineThat.blogspot.com

Friday, November 17, 2000
Stupid Floridiots!!! i think someone should just like bomb that f****in' state or something!! foreal!! geez...anyway Al Gore for President. Oh man i have a headache! and it sucks some major big fat dick!! UGH!! yeah its the weekend, and overslept, i was supposed to go to the movies w/my friends, but i forgot all about it, oh well i was tired anyway....i'm so sick of Christina Aglyrerai cant stand that anorexic ugly bitch, she aint even pretty w/out all that makeup she wears...but why should i care...back to some important shit, man i felll down the stairs today at school that was sorta embarrasing!! .......well i'mma 'bout tah go take a shit, so i'll blab later...
Peace
posted by Clear at 8:17 PM

The full collection with screen shots here.

• iPhone Porn Grid
• iPinkVisual
• iPhorne
• iPhoneQuickies
• Fappod

Steve Jobs doesn't really disprove of the alternative uses of his PDA since the Apple lackey he sent to address the issue to Time magazine is named Jennifer Bowcock. The only problem with iPhone porn? The technology hasn't kept apace with the private spank Idahos of certain bloggers like Jason Swifter (another good name): "I wish there was an application that allowed you to undress people by dragging your fingers across the screen and literally dragging it off." Soon, Jason, soon.

About a third of iPhone users watch video on their phone, according to Nielsen Mobile, nearly 10 times the number that watch video on other cell phones. Three out of four iPhone users are men with above-average incomes, and iPhone users spend heavily on entertainment. More than a third of iPhone users shell out more than $100 on phone and data charges every month, as compared with just a fifth of other cell phone users.

That more than half the male owners of the device have had to buy actual cell phones for making calls might have clued in industry analysts.

[Time]

[Via Galleycat]

Honestly Doctorow's just showing that busy plugged-in people can start reasonable habits, an old idea that most people (me) still can't accept, instead leaving open a 200-person buddy list and watching little Gmail notifications in the corner of the screen because OTHERWISE I COULD MISS A BIG STORY OH DEAR LORD.

After all, if you are not already cracking jokes within 22 minutes of a celebrity's death is announced on Drudge, you are irrelevant.

When I'm out, I want to know what people are saying to me. Used to be I needed to go to my big box and look up my messages. Now I can go out and still check for messages in a little box in my pocket. Next I want a device to speak messages into my head without me having to use my hands. That's not actually ridiculous!

Science fiction has used this idea for years; the fantasy used to be written up as mystical telepathy, but eventually writers figured we'll actually engineer this ability some day, so now sci-fi telepathy uses implants and nanotechnology. So will real communications, soon enough. As with cell phones, the technology will look clunky at first. For example, this neckband microphone could let people Google by silently forming words in their throats.

Imagine having a conversation and being able to invisibly call up instant research. For all practical purposes, you'd be as smart as the Internet (or as dumb as the Internet, but still). Eventually such devices will get slick and unnoticeable, until a hands-free Internet tool is as essential as a cell phone. We've seen how much an Internet-in-boxes did for the world; imagine what Internet-in-our-brains will do.

Meanwhile, look at the problems of excessive Internet use. They're just the old problems of desk work: sedentary lifestyle and frustration at broken machines. There's nothing inherently bad about being more connected to the world. (There's something inherently annoying, but you can turn off your Facebook feeds easier than you can ignore your family.)

My condition gives me "anger, tension and/or depression." It causes "arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation and fatigue." It makes me stupid and forgetful. Twelve hours a day online is unhealthy; that's why I need twenty-four.

Origins
Rickrolling began last year in 4chan's video game forum. (The 4chan forum site is the sewer of the Internet, but the worst griefing and fighting happens in its /b/ forum. The other forums stay somewhat on topic but are still perverse and often baffling.) Anyway according to the Encyclopedia Dramatica, when Grand Theft Auto IV's official web site launched, everyone rushed to see it and the site got overloaded. Back on 4chan, some people pointed to exclusive videos of the upcoming game, and the frustrated GTA fans clicked the links. Instead of game footage, they got Rickrolled.

The fad caught on, then spread to other popular forums like Fark and Slashdot, which share some users with 4chan. From there it went to the 250, the bloggers and nerds who think they are the center of the Internet — these people. Those people spread it to the web at large and now it's a trend story in the Guardian.

Varieties
Before (or maybe slightly after) the Rickroll came the duckroll, which was the same thing with a picture of a duck on wheels instead of "Never Gonna Give You Up." The absurdity was funnier, but still rather pointless. It still wasn't impressive to, gasp, send someone to a web page they did not expect.

A more heinous variety of Rickroll is a trick that resizes and animates the victim's window and pops up messages, making it very hard to close the window without hearing the whole song. Jesus, never do this. How is it funny? You're just making someone click things, listen to banal noise, and resize their windows. You're replicating the banner ad experience from 2003.

The problem with Rickrolls is the lack of sufficient setup. When you link to something, you set up a tiny expectation in me. That doesn't make for much of a fall when I see the punchline. So the few redeemable Rickrolls must come at the end of a long setup in which a link is discussed at length before it's given. Even real-world Rickrolls are disappointing because they ride on the cultural capital of the web's worst joke.

Alternatives
I was goatseing long before Rickroll. Goatse, the image of a man stretching his own ass open (described at length on Wikipedia), triggers an actual moment of horror (though it's funnier if a first-time victim isn't really bothered). There are other shock sites like meatspin, which humiliates the viewer for watching. A Rickroll is like poking someone in the chest; Goatse is sucker-punching them. Still obviously for teens, college students, and the sort of guy who likes ads by Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

But lately I've switched to "happyrolls," my stupid word for surprising people with good things. "Ha, you thought I was linking you to a spreadsheet, but it's a really cute cartoon about history!" I know, this is so "pay it forward" or whatever, but it's not Rick Astley.

Baio, who recently left Yahoo after selling his startup to the company, has willingly become the definition of "time on his hands," turning his personal blog into a one-man Boing Boing.

David Wain (of the surprisingly witty series Wainy Days) credits the strike with luring more TV stars over to web comedy. That really is a boost to the medium; the success of online sketches involving Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Bill Murray, David Cross, Michael Cera, Chris Kattan, and Bob Odenkirk showed that TV and film stars can do fresh things online with less-exposed costars, creators and crew. They also bring a respect for their work that you just can't find in most web-based comedy groups, like the stupid but popular Smosh.

Web series director Liz Cackowski mocks people who think they can invent a viral video; College Humor comedian Donald Glover (of the funny-actually-you-should-watch-it group Derrick Comedy) points out that you can't wait a week to make a joke, because someone will beat you to it. And one of the million people who parodied Tom Cruise the other week admits that not all his ideas are gold, which is kind of funny when his only famous video was the most unoriginal idea since "Leave So-and-So Alone."

• #6 "where do i vote"
• #12 "what is super tuesday"
• #23 "fat tuesday"
• #31 "am i registered to vote"

Xcaliber was early social-networking technology developed at Dartmouth College. In the heyday of Dungeons & Dragons, its vaguely Arthurian theme appealed to both hackers and preadolescents.

We evolved a whole cutesy shtick that, in this text-only interface, chiefly meant giving up mixed cases. In the name of enhancing adorableness, we stuck to little letters and as few spaces as English semantics could bear. Our classic squinched-up opener was "hi-howre you?"

At 13, Megan and I introduced our friends to the conference, and as early adapters she and I felt obliged to play the pros and make the whole thing look ungeeky. When someone on the network asked me what I was up to, I replied — without fail — "music, sports and parties," which was true, strictly speaking...

Thanks to Chris Hansen and his team of pedophile hunters at Dateline, everyone has learned two things: First, that you should only approach underage girls you've met in person, and second, that the Internet is full of dirty men who want to rape your daughter.

Well, engage in consensual sex with your daughter. "To Catch a Predator" involves voluntary meetings, not secret stalkers. Fear of unintended contact with predators is far more often based on urban legend and a few highly publicized stories. In fact, during the growth of the Internet from 1990 to 2000, estimated sexual abuse cases fell 40%. As of 2004, 85% of child abuse and sexual abuse was committed by the victims' family, with only 9% of abuse cases coming from outside a child's immediate circle of normally trusted adults. A kid is statistically ten times as likely to get jumped by Mom, Dad, or Grandpa as by an Internet stranger.

So much for the Internet as a hive of predators. But it could still be a place for bullying. Oh yes! So could school. Over 1 in 10 kids grades 6-10 surveyed in an academic study said they've been bullied (another 13% said they've bullied others, and 6% swung both ways). The nice thing (in this case) about the Internet is you can't punch someone through it. The other nice thing is that you can document everything over it. There will be the occasional high-profile "MySpace suicide" like Megan Meier's (in which the fake profile that allegedly drove Meier to suicide was a hoax by the neighbors), and everyone will focus on the one part of the story that depended on the Internet, but the truth is that online bullying is a lot more detectable and preventable than real-world abuse.

Frontline also points out that, surprise, kids can get loads of porn online. Not going to argue this. But why is it a bad thing? Thanks to the abstinence-only sex education promoted by the Clinton and Bush administrations (and largely uncriticized by presidential hopefuls), parents and peers still bear the full burden of teaching sexuality to youth. But kids, or at least boys, can find porn faster than their parents can figure out how to give "the talk," so they end up seeing quite a lot that they don't understand, but feels really right. As comedian Ze Frank said, learning how to have sex from watching porn is like learning how to drive from watching monster truck rallies, but it at least gets some of the basics down.

And teens are reaching past porn to find real information about sex. Nikol Hasler of the Midwest Teen Sex Show, told me she gets hundreds of e-mails a day about her show, and many are from teens asking sex-ed questions. (Male teens mostly ask if their dicks are normal.) She wants to create a forum to accompany her weekly web show, somewhere between the unmoderated forums where teens already work out sex through awkward flirtation, and the hypermoderated forums that can squelch "stupid questions" as much as a real-world classroom.

Frontline also addresses a particularly tricky area: pro-anorexia web sites. I can't deny that anorexics might find the same Internet benefit as Rubik's Cube solvers: Whereas before, there might be only one anorexic girl in a classroom (or so she thinks), finding thousands of sympathetic anorexics can normalize and encourage her anorexia, creating a "safe haven" that further drives her away from confronting her problem. The only hope here may be to catch the problem in real life. Again, this is only a reflection of a large offline problem and a long-term rise in eating disorders since as early as the 1930s.

So in the real world, kids are being preyed upon by their parents, beaten up at school, and shamed by teachers for wanting to have sex. On the Internet, they're talking more freely with their peers, keeping tabs on each other, and busting a nut without getting each other pregnant. It's not a sanitized world, but neither is the real one. The biggest problem is the lack of understanding that drives parents to shame and control their kids until they break all trust and know nothing about their children's online activity. Thanks, Frontline.

UPDATE: A publicist from Frontline noted that I apparently hadn't watched the documentary and said it's available online. Frontline's segment on predators does focus on the fears of parents and other media coverage, but the show gives generous time to danah boyd and other commentators that support a more balanced view of kids on the Internet. The fearmongering came mostly from the Times' poor representation of the show. My fault for not finding the original footage.