Homepages. Who needs them? They're the scourge of the Internet. And guess who are the worst culprits? Go on, have a guess. Egocentric salesmen with the motto: If it moves, sell it? Tedious small companies who have been told they need a web presence? Don't be ridiculous, they are nothing, barely fit to clean the angle brackets of the true inheritors of the Web... students. Hail the Colossi of Web site design! University students, art students, school students - they're all there in their droves, and by god, if there's one thing the web teaches you, it's quite how many of them there are out there.
The trouble is not just that there are trillions of student homepages, nor that you can't help but stumble over a few every time you need to search for anything. No, the problem is that they are pathetic. If you don't believe me, check out Dave Smith's homepage, and there are millions more just like him. Tawdry, tedious, tepid, torpid, thin, and that's just the Ts. Also, opinionated and crass. I mean, who cares what you think? Your opinions are naive and ill-founded and should be confined to the student bar or each other's rooms late at night over a cup of cheap coffee and a spliff.
And that's another thing. What they hell are these idiots doing spending all their time making web sites? Haven't they got anything better to do? Look at Analeen Newitz's homepage. Look at all the links off it. Then check out her other Web site. Like she needs to have two separate Web sites 'cos she's got such a lot of interesting stuff to say. Just SHUT UP and DO some WORK. Isn't that what you're at University for?
No, of course it isn't. You're at University to stay up late playing guitar, to find out what happens when you drink half a pint of vodka in one, to take acid, and to run out of restaurants without paying, thinking you're really cool. You might even be at University to screw your way through half the student population of Shrewsbury Town.
But you are not there to sit around on your lardy arses all day, writing down your insipid life stories, illustrated with a cute picture of you at the age of 2 sitting in the bath, or to inform the ignorant and uncaring folk of the world that by our greed we are destroying the environment or that discrimination is rampant throughout our society. We KNOW. We've been around longer than you. Did you honestly think we hadn't NOTICED? If you were as smart as you'd like to think, you'd have worked out that this must be how we LIKE it. Or if what you're saying is such a great idea, do you really think you're the first person who ever though of it? COME ON. The only consolation for the rest of us is that you will have to live with the knowledge of the embarrassing twaddle you put on your homepage for the rest of your life.
Of course, there's no point in complaining. They're never going to be made illegal, and they're everywhere, jamming up the entire web with their tired political bleatings and their dull facts about their empty lives and vapid families. So you've got to learn to love them, like I do.
Start with these and see how you get on. Joseph L Becker: He sure is a shy, unassuming fellow, and he sures loves Anathea. Anathea, a word of advice. Don't let him touch you, he's bound to have diseases. Or how about this little beauty? Marian Mackenzie-Ross - one of my all-time favourites. Let the good time roll Marian. Ratgrrrl's hideout This one's very good in fact, but Megan, that just means YOU'VE BEEN WASTING YOUR TIME when you should have been doing something constructive. Elizabeth Arsem (no relation). Woah, what a lot of words. And in answer to your first question. No, it is not okay.