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The Fifth Circle of Hell - The Internet

From Wikipedia:
In the swamp-like water of the river Styx, the wrathful fight each other on the surface, and the sullen or slothful lie gurgling beneath the water.

Wrathful and slothful... trolls and lurkers! The fifth circle of hell is the internet!

In any public forum there are two types of people. There are those that apathetically listen along with no outward sign that they're doing anything more than pondering what's for dinner. Then you have those that suddenly emerge from the woodwork the moment there's a point that (they think) is open to discussion.

(Incidentally the internet is comes with a strange 3rd category labelled the aol'ers, those people that actually go to the effort of posting "me too!" making no attempt to add anything of substance to the debate. In no other public forum do you have people that stand up and say "I agree completely with everything you have just said" then sit down again.)

The Internet is a wonderful place for gathering information and an amazing opportunity to communicate with different people. Educated and interested individuals the whole world over can get together to teach and learn about science, religion, culture, politics, art, history, language... anything! Between ebay, Google, Wikipedia, YouTube and various blogs you can find just about any information or product you want! And what do you get? Mentos in Diet Coke, photos of cats, discussions on last night's Grey's Anatomy and Jesus on toast.

The Internet allows you to fast forward through issues. Within moments you can become an expert on the most random, obscure thing. The adage of 'see it, do it, teach it' can be revised to 'wikipedia it, blog it, forget it'. Google acts as the world's most technologically advanced combine harvester, sorting through the millions of pages of chaff and digging out a couple of grains of wheat. In just minutes you can amaze your friends and colleagues with your knowledge of trivial subjects. I mean, obviously I performed a detailed study of Dante's works and the philosophical issues raised by his Divine Comedy before writing these articles, but theoretically you could do the same thing with just 2 minutes on Wikipedia. So I'm told.

Whatever you're looking for, someone is willing to share their knowledge. But by the same measure someone is waiting to criticise it. The happy bunch of goats is ambling along with its discussion when suddenly out from under a bridge appears a raging troll ready to flame grill the goats while giving an enthusiastic rendition of "you’re wrong, I'm right, the world is doomed". It doesn’t actually matter what the initial subject of debate is, it's always possible to manoeuvre it around so that we are all doomed.

It's easier then ever for muppets to arrive on the internet and start making noise. Alarm bells start ringing as soon as you see a message with more numbers than letters, which you need some kind of decoder book to translate back into English. If they're too illiterate to manage even text speak they can break out their web cams and inflict not only their thoughts upon the world, but also their poor camera work, voices, faces and any other part of their anatomy they feel inclined to share.

Even if you've made it through the awful spelling, poor English and strange acronyms you still have to try and actually deduce the meaning and intent of the words. The problem is that human beings rely an awful lot on body language and facial expressions. Punctuation rearranged in amusing ways to look like faces can only do so much, even if your forum software is helpfully changing them into a whole array of little yellow bouncing icons. One innocent little piece of sarcasm can lead to all out warfare before you’ve even had the chance to refresh the page.

The internet is a breeding ground for obsessives. If you have a vague interest in something you can just power up a browser and find a wealth of news, interviews, discussions, videos, fanfiction, blogs and goodness knows what else. You may not start out obsessed, but it’s contagious. One moment you're a perfectly rational human being, the next you're compulsively refreshing ebay to see if your bid for vintage A-Team memorabilia was successful.

There are fansites for just about everything; people gathered together in joined worship of their chosen god, be it a band, an actor, a tv series or metrological phenomenon. Every picture, every rumour, every reference is pounced upon, shared, analysed to death and 'squee'ed over.

But the fast-forward effect once again comes into effect and the worshippers rebel, the obsession burns bright and then novas out. New albums/episodes/books are met with negative reviews, every piece of news is met with "this is the end of the world as we know it". Once beloved heroes become reviled as sell-outs. But it never quite occurs to people to move on to their next obsession and stop participating. In the old days the press coverage would stop as interest declined and the obsessed could gradually decrease their intake. The internet however doesn’t work like that; sites linger and discussion forums are self sustaining under the weight of their own bluster forcing users to go cold turkey if they really want to quit.

I think we need some kind of clinic, an online detox. Trolls and lurkers alike could check in and every time they felt the need to point out that you cannot actually invert the polarity of a warp bubble, a trained scientist could remind them that it's actually all fictional. For every "they've sold out, it was much better in my day" an economist could explain inflation rates while a psychologist talks of the long time effects on drummers who live in their parents' basement. Each "they're killing my show" could have a channel executive calmly pass the viewer a remote control.