Evan and I would sit in the far back right corner of the classroom, just in case I dozed off and fell asleep, and so that Evan could fall asleep. It’s been a week into school, and everyday has been a dull one. We were upper classmen now, but we still felt like sophomores and sometimes freshmen. We really weren’t that much older even though we moved up from being lower classmen all the way to being upper classmen, and entirely skipped being the middle classmen or any sort of transition state. But it’s just one word that changed, so I guess it’s reasonable to say that we all didn’t feel much of a change.
Then while watching what other people were doing instead of watching Mr. Levy write up some more basic equations before class as he’s been doing for a whole week already, I saw Jesse Holland in the most front left seat of the classroom effortlessly toss his pen back and forth, and up and down his fingers. Evan was like my guide in everything and I became rather dependent on him over the years, so I asked, “Hey, wake up, look at what Jesse’s pen. What’s he doing?†in a way that made it seem like he knew everything and was prepared to give me an answer in a drowsy, half awake voice. Instead I heard a quiet whisper, so only I could hear it, “Holyy shi-.â€
The bell rung violently to indicate that class had started and to stop talking, but sitting in honors physics, that just meant to stop talking for the few seconds that the bell was actually ringing. My physics teacher tried to quiet us all down, but they were rather futile attempts. We just continued to talk, so I don’t know whether or not to call him tolerant, or just a pushover. Eventually, he would just start writing, and we would just suddenly start taking notes.
Details are not really important here, but we were both still amazed by Jesse’s pen tricks and so after a couple more weeks we learned every trick Jesse knew and then became members of the Universal Pen Spinning Board.
“Let me introduce you to the interwebs.†I stared blankly at my friend, Evan, as he claimed he was about to teach me about the internet. I was sixteen, I knew about the internet; I wasn’t my grandfather or my younger brother. And so I just continued to stare in confusion until I finally asked “What’re you talking about? I go online and IM you every day. I’m pretty sure I know how to use the internet.†I was sadly mistaken and was soon to crawl deeper into the internet, where anyone and everyone said and put up pictures of whatever they wanted, no matter how disgusting, because of the safety of their computer screen as a shield from anyone they might offend online. The internet became known to me as a place where some people could shed their everyday masks and revealed their true nature, and not get any severe repercussions.
I began spending so much time on UPSB’s “shoutbox†or a forum chatbox where anyone could type something and click “shout†or enter, and have anyone registered looking at the shoutbox at that moment see it. When I wasn’t on UPSB at home, I was learning different tricks at school; well I called it learning how to spin, but my teachers just called it plain dropping.
I walked into the shoutbox one day, and greeted everyone with a friendly “Hey guys =)†which to them probably made me sound like a noob. Noob, a term that I’ve come to become quite accustomed to hearing on a daily basis, was someone who was new and an amateur to something. I, unfortunately, was a noob who spammed the shoutbox. I had my chin rested on my hand when all of a sudden I saw a link and with a message attached to it: AWESOME VIDEO!!! YOU MUST WATCH THIS!!! And so newcomer John, of course, clicks it. A new window opens, and then another, and then another, and then twenty more. My computer was blasting “Never Gonna Give You Up†by Rick Astley, and as I closed one window, ten more popped up with the same thing, but this time, these ten circled around my screen at speeds that my mouse could not catch them at. After I managed to close one of them through careful timing and planning, what do you know, ten more spawned from that with Rick Astley’s music video playing over and over again. It was becoming a nightmare, and I didn’t want to infect this new computer with a virus because of my stupid mistake of clicking such a suspicious link posted on the internet. I then remembered, Ctrl + Alt + Delete, and my computer, my life, was saved. I ended all the tasks that were up, and I got my clean desktop back. I stormed back onto UPSB as I let a virus scan run, and flamed the person who posted up that link for tricking me into clicking it. That didn’t mean much to him though, he had a shield placed between our bodies, and I couldn’t do anything to get back at him for my frustration except be smarter next time. I was just Rick Roll’d.
I would get Rick Roll’d dozens of more times until I actually began to like the song and clicked on links to just listen to it; most of them were harmless links to youtube anyway which isn’t nearly as annoying as that first link I got. There was so much more for me to learn though, and so many new things came up every day, but I would soon come to learn where most internet slangs came from. “So i herd u liek mudkipzâ€, LOLcats, BARREL ROLL, “Its over 9000!â€, An Hero, TITS OR GTFO, PedoBear, Troll, are just a few of the terms that I heard, or rather that I saw typed, on a daily basis. 4chan became the reason for all this virtual chaos. Chaos that I have never experienced before while e-mailing or Google’ing, or even knew existed online until now.
Every meme has an origin and story to it, and once it hits 4chan, it hits almost everywhere on the internet. Or at least where most adults don’t go. Some advice for the reader: Don’t go on 4chan. Up until this day, I have been too afraid to go on 4chan and too afraid of what disgusting things I might witness on that site. But I’ve been too afraid to even try and find the site so I don’t even know how to get to 4chan up to this day. All the dirt of the internet sent to one address. Even with every post that’s 48 hours old being constantly deleted, it’s still such a cesspool and has such a high bandwidth. Seeing just some screenshots of what is on there has deterred me enough to not go on the site altogether.
But just like war, while it scars a soldier, it also teaches them invaluable lessons. The darkest parts of the internet are the same in the manner of mentally scarring a person by showing them such immoral and sickening images that people should never be subjected to. How could you have images shown to the public of a person having their excretory hole stretched nearly a foot wide, with thick clumps of blood all over the floor and trickling down the man’s thighs and legs.
Yet I still go online and onto UPSB every day. Thankfully the topic of discussion is usually not so graphic, but when they are, wow, I really learn and feel my layers of innocence peel away. UPSB is a forum for pen spinning and for pen spinners to get together as an online community to help each other with how to do certain tricks and how to make certain modifications to pens, but I hardly use it for that purpose anymore. I just go on to see the people I see every day, and I log onto that site as if I was stepping into the door of my own house. On the site nowadays, I’ve luckily gained some recognition since I first started and can now ban certain people from the site, or edit their shouts and make sure that everything is appropriate, especially for younger children who also go on the site. Being a moderator on this forum has really been quite rewarding. I’ve learned to administer proper punishments, keep everything in order, and still be spoken to just as another fellow pen spinning member, even if it’s all just virtual.
This is where my knowledge of the “interwebs,†as Evan called it, had been given birth to. And this online forum, as ridiculous as my parents or friends may think I am for it, is where I can hang my Home Sweet Home sign up.
that's the first time that i got that about my writing
better than just the plain bad that i usually get xD