Six Terrible Things That Are Sure To Happen If SOPA Passes
1. The internet as we know it will collapse, and we will all need to dig out our old modems to dial in to BBSes just to get our online fix. It goes without saying that the porn industry will need to resort to ASCII art to stay competitive.
2. GeoCities will resurrect as a SOPA-free sovereign state, and millions will flock to the long-abandoned neighborhoods to set up refuge camps.
3. Former internet citizens, having nothing better to do, will descend upon capital hill for what will become known as the Mass Memeing of Congress.
4. Internet pirates will revel in their exalted status as Enemy Number One and begin to actually using pirates, eyepatches, and 17th-century frigates to conduct business. SOPA will shoot Johnny Depp dead just to be on the safe side.
5. Hollywood, proud of its actions leading up to SOPA’s passage, will devote an entire summer blockbuster season to patting itself on the back with loud, ignorant flicks directed by Michael Bay and starring any Baldwin that it can get a hold of.
6. The only MMO to become immune from SOPA prosecution will be, oddly enough, Vanguard. Virtually overnight, SOE’s struggling title will be transformed into the most popular game in the world, to the point where our children will have never heard of World of Warcraft or Hello Kitty Online.
- Posted in: General
I enjoy sarcasm as much as anybody, but this is, actually, an important issue. An absurd power to censorship almost anything on the most important communication tool the world has ever seen. Looks like you are trying to lighten that and say it’s not that big deal. But it is. It definately is.
But I like Johnny Depp.
I’m looking forward to the Memeing of Congress.
I have to go with Ellohir on this one. If you want to go the sarcasm route, I think you have to pull out all the stops like they did at Daily WTF and hail SOPA as the end of this horrible HTML/Java experiment and a return to the sanity of the Gopher standard.
Have to agree with Ellohir and Wilhelm – I like sarcasm as much as the next guy, but I think this is going in the wrong direction. It implies that people are making too big a deal out of SOPA and it’s not really anything to worry about, and I just don’t think that’s true.
I’m against SOPA as much as everyone else. But it isn’t sacrosanct or above being made fun of, either. It always interests me what the internet deems as too taboo to mock.
As a P.S., I got a snerk out of KIASA’s post today: http://www.kiasa.org/2012/01/18/stop-soap/
@Syp – It isn’t that the subject is sacrosanct, it is that your examples were so mild that I honestly couldn’t tell what you were mocking. Like I said, if you’re going for sarcasm, pull out all the stops and go over the top.
nice list syp ^^ and also keep up the podcast, i like TLDL!
and on topic: http://tech.turbu-rpg.com/393/the-worst-thing-about-sopa
Well, I’ll defend Syp here, for what it’s worth. Sarcasm loses it’s meaning if it’s too over-the-top.
If it’s one thing the internet is good at, it’s hyperbole. SOPA is bad. We’ve got it. But there is quite a bit of misinformation on the anti-SOPA side of the discussion as well. Which is what I believe is being parodied in this post. If one were to believe everything they’ve read about this topic, that person would likely think that SOPA passing means we’ll all be submitted to government re-education programs about the evils of the internets and that anyone who so much as clicks on Wikipedia will be put on the international terrorist watchlist.
In any case, I found the post to be amusing and poignant. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t already sent off my tweets, emails, webforms, et al, to my senators and representatives. That just means that while I find the bill distasteful and wrong, I also don’t think the wide world of the internets will disappear overnight should ignorant, disconnected people pass a massively funded, heavily lobbied bill.
Now then, if the internet machine mind could get behind lobbying reform and campaign finance reform, we might be able to start affecting some real difference…. but those just aren’t as sexy topics to discuss and Google would rather like to keep their lobbyists in place.
@ Wilhelm – Oh, I was just feeling mildly goofy, that’s all. No biggie!
I did, BTW, add a protest banner to the site.
@Richard – Well, it is the problem of the internet that there is no sarcasm tag, so unless you have built up a Melmoth-like reputation for sarcasm (I predict that some day he will do a simple, straight, serious declarative post and the internet will break), you need to go big or risk people missing either missing the sarcasm or missing its point. Or you have to explain yourself in the comments when people go “Huh?” as happened here with some of us. Such is my opinion anyway. It is a blogger occupational risk.
@Syp – As somebody who is always just mildly goofy, I understand. Much of my blogging life has been spent wondering, “Did anybody get that joke/reference or really understand where I was coming from?”
I saw the WordPress.com options and put the ribbon on my site as well. I also blacked out my other site, the one that nobody ever reads, which I suppose is the blogging equivalent of protesting against the government in your living room.
I am unreservedly against SOPA in its current form.
This comment isn’t sarcasm.
Or is it?
Really, I just want to see the Internet break, then I can claim that I beat SOPA to it.
@Melmoth – I think the internet has seen that episode of Star Trek.
I’m concerned about what will happen to the common person who has downloaded the “wrong” thing. What if I’ve downloaded a copy of ‘Pirates of the Carribean,’ or something and I am found with it – what happens to me? I what if I downloaded a movie 10 years ago?,… or if my friend downloaded it and gave it to me, or left it in my garage under a box I haven’t moved in 2 years? What then? Will it come to that?