I spend an unfortunate amount of time on the internet. Why? Because I have a knowledge addiction.
Or that is what I tell myself.
The internet is at it’s most beautiful when you realize how it truly spreads the information to anyone with a cell phone or a dial-up. Free to wander through the interpipes and leak onto anyone’s desktop. One day a bunch of smart guys said “we need to be smarter together faster and from further distances” so they turned off their gramophones, laid some fiber and the internet was born. Slowly growing and making both knowledge and Wikipedia free to travel seemingly infinite distances within mere seconds.
That is why I love the Tumblr and the Twitter. There is so much art. There is so much news. There is so much technical information. THE BEAUTIFUL MEMES!! So much stuff that earlier ages never had access to if it wasn’t within a donkey’s trip to the local general store.
Thus my brain grows needy. Click. Click, click, click. So many answers to asked questions and and four times as many to unasked questions! I can’t turn away. My brain will not let me. There is too much knowledge to be absorbed!
That is the rub.
For every 100 things I never knew I wanted to know, there is one thing I knew I never wanted to. Such as when I was reading a reddit thread and kousi says, “He just brought the jolly rancher story back to every redditor’s mind 
.”
As a redditor for about a year, there are still plenty of inside “jokes” that I don’t get. Being more of a lurker, I mentally persuaded some distant geek to demand the knowledge I did not possess. Reasonman did. “Wait wait, tell me I want to be in on it too.”
Surely that is just overstating the link.
Let me just be clear at this moment, I have seen and read some fucked up stuff on the internet. I am not new to the dangerous waters she bears. I have seen grotesque dead bodies. I could give more examples, but that is all you need. I have never wanted to see a dead body, let alone multiple mangled corpses.
Even knowing such terrible images can be hidden behind those little blue words I am overwhelmed by the irresistible urge to click through. It is the need for knowledge, understanding of the joke, leaving no stone unturned, perpetually proving to myself what an idiot I am, whatever excuse I want to give myself that day.
So I did it yet again. I read the Jolly Rancher story. And I now want to re-enact that scene from Pi where the dude permanently drills the thoughts out of his brain.
Some of you undoubtedly want to read the Jolly Rancher story to see for yourselves the yuck. I would never post this without giving you that link. But if I could just take a moment and beseech you to not do it. This isn’t the worst thing I have ever read on the internet, but it is still disgusting and did not further my evening/intelligence/life in any way. Save your brain cells!
Maybe this can serve as life practice for you to avoid any link where someone explicitly tells you to stay away. Because you may read this particular little tale and think I am simply over-reacting to a nasty, most likely fictional, little story, which may be true, but then one day you will come across another link and think yet again that you can handle it. And that will be the day that haunts you forever.
Not clicking will never bother you on your deathbed.
But, if you still must know, here is the Jolly Rancher story.
For those who clicked on the link, here is a picture of kittens.
Mental cleanser, I hope.
