Ten Dirty Words of the Internet

In the ten years or so that I've been using the Net, the language of cyberspace has now been polluted with dirty words. So it is with much cynicism and world-weariedness Simon presents the Ten dirty words of the Internet:

Spam – this would probably be the mother of all internet dirty words. Originally, it’s a brand of canned food in the US. But it has now evolved to mean unsolicited or junk e-mail. I get at least a dozen of these things everyday. How people can still hope to make money this way a beyond me. (See also Nigerian credit card scams, online poker, Male enhancement drugs, free online degrees, etc)

Napster – not a dirty word for users like us, but one for those music corporations like Sony and Warner. Try to imagine a few Goliaths with WMDs taking on little David.

404 – means you’ve reached a dead-end or a abandoned house on the information superhighway. Realistically, someone failed to update the link or the website your looking for doesn’t exist anymore. In real life when you move house, you would leave a forwarding address, right?

Fwd: Fw: FW: Fwd: FW: You Got to Read This!!! – It goes straight to my trash can. Not the recycle bin, the TRASH CAN.

Cyber-squatting – as with most of the dirty words here, it has something to do with making a quick buck. This is actually a darn good way, if ethics is beyond you. Step one: find a big corporation or famous name that doesn’t own an obvious domain name. Step two: register it. Step three: sell it to the rich sucker when he/she/they finally get round to making a website. Or face a long legal battle. One famous one was recently was www.whoisadamking.com.

Out of Office AutoReply – I just find this annoying. Hard to explain why.

“Upgrade to Plus Package for only $50!” – oldest selling trick in the book. First you sign up for FREE package with the most basic features. THEN they tempt you to upgrade to a paying package with MORE features. How to pay? By credit card, of course. Man, is that going to open another can of worms.

Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, Fred Durst, et al – Look, I have nothing against these celebrities, but sometimes enough is enough. The acres of cyber-time and –space dedicated to them is horrendous when you consider that it could put to good use. Like Darfur. Like the Nias tsunami victims. Like Down Syndrome children. Like cancer research.

“Send this to 10 of your friends and be blessed…” – How many times have you received those powerpoint shows of soppy clichés accompanied by retarded photos of flowers, sunset or Anne Geddes’ pictures of babies in flowers and animal outfits? Why do people actually spend time preparing these slideshows?! Either they have WAY too much time on their hands or they have some anal retentive issues they need to deal with.

Windows – see blue screen of death, crash, unstable, patch version 524, etc.