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Yanno what?  My last couple of posts have been a bit blah.  I mean, I feel like I ended them on an upbeat note, and I tried to interject some humor in to the subjects I was touching on…but overall, I think it’s high time that I do a full post that accentuates the positive.

And, since digital mannerisms and behaviors have been rather forefront in my head a lot recently, I think I’ll sing the virtues of the internet.  Like a Julie Andrews with significantly less talent.

“thHA HhIIllLS ARre ah-LII-IIiiveE…”

Comment Sections

Wait, wut?  Yes, I literally just posted about how people misuse or misconstrue words just yesterday.  And the grander wisdom is that you just don’t read comments.  And in some subjects or some websites, that is absolutely true.  Still, either I am a sadist or a blindly hopeful person, because I still go to comment sections of websites all the time.

And you know what?  I’ve met some damned cool people as a result.

Lots of folks that I’ve interacted with in comments have either made me smile or laugh, or have provoked thought, or have otherwise become people that I interact with outside of the realm of a website’s comment community.  There’s something about a commentariat that just makes you feel like you’re forming a little city.  In varying degrees, this works out, and I still get the sense that a community is trying to form regardless of topic.  We’re all just those little green Doozers trying to build a city and hope those damned Fraggles don’t eat it.

Pictured: Every Star Citizen comment section.

Photoshop Artists

Holy crap, these folks.  I mean, seriously.  These motherfluffers.  I have dabbled in Photoshop on more than a few occasions.  Even pulled together some okay pieces.  But ultimately, I pale in comparison to some of the wit and humor and charm of a really good Photoshop gag.

Largely this stuff is tied to memes, which are almost universally derided.  But even an overused subject like a meme can come up with some very funny items.  Though I will admit that the ones that stand out the most are the ones that don’t really associate with a meme.  They skewer something about culture or current events, or even lampoon the internet itself.  It’s that sort of self-aware and self-depreciating style of humor that I gravitate to and usually end up using myself quite frequently.

Also, there’s nightmare fuel. Which is still funny to me.

YouTube Poops

I will be the first to admit that my sense of humor outside of more open forums tends to be pretty puerile.  With some exceptions, I have a pretty twisted and malleable sense of humor.  So YouTube Poops–videos that take a source material and cut them together in to a totally different and often funny piece of media–are a source of a lot of that sort of humor for me.

Now many times people tend to cut together source material in to a litany of swear words, and these aren’t exactly clever.  But the ones that I really enjoy are a lot better thought out than that.  Some of my all-time favorites hardly use any swearing at all.  A particular standout is one YTP entitled “Patman Post is Diverted”, which splices together scenes from the old BBC children’s program Postman Pat in to a totally different and absolutely hilarious video.

A World of Creativity

Finally, the Internet has opened my personal world to a whole mess of incredibly creative folks in a variety of media.  From writers to artists to everything in between, from a whole variety of subject matter and creation tools.  Everything from podcast creators to people who draw stuff to the line of bloggers that this Blaugust Initiative has introduced me to.

People are insanely talented.  And people are even more willing to share that talent and that skill with so many people.  It is incredibly amazing to witness and I continue to be honored to be counted among some of those folks in some ways.

In a world where we sort of fixate on how terrible data transfer can be, how invasive a digital world is and how easy it is to break down people from great distances without any recourse or consequence, it’s nice to realize that…yanno what?  This shit is really cool.  And it continues to be enriching and delightful in spite of the awfulness.