In defense of crap web pages
There can, of course, be no denying that most web pages are dire. The web can be a wonderful source of information if you know what you're looking for, but on those days when you go clicking at random, the chances are you'll arrive within a few short mouse clicks at an excruciatingly painful colour scheme, framing a huge, 200 meg GIF file of some asshole's first born, seconds out of the womb. But let's face it, it's not the sort of thing you come across while you're looking for a driver for your new sound card or trolling for porn1.
Smug magazines, the sort that pay fortunes to professionals for their own web pages, have devoted acres of dead trees to the slagging off of pages that were put together by talentless amateurs. I won't mention any names2, but they know who they are. What, precisely, is their argument?
It seems they're compaining because when some poor chappie posts piccies of his pets (or even worse, his kids), he's doing so while labouring under the misapprehension that the world is interested in downloading GIFs of some mewling, six-month-old shit factory drooling at a digital camera. Of course, the world -- smug magazines included -- has no interest in these pictures, and even the most devoted of daddies or mommies knows this.
So why do they do it? The reasoning is, I suspect, similar to my own reasons for posting this page; because I think there are a few people out there who may be interested. And they're performing a public service by making the viewing of these pictures voluntary. Sure, you've got to download them, but that's a small price to pay when the alternative is some doting parent shoving 10x8 glossies at you, all the while asking "isn't it3 gorgeous?" Of course it fucking isn't, but any comments containing the words "ugly" "wrinkled" or "spud" will result in irrational sulking and a refusal to let you near the house again until the kid is at glue-sniffing age.
So let us give thanks for the crap web pages. Let us revel that it's safe to walk the streets without the fear of a proud parent accosting you, that we no longer have to hide at the sight of someone walking down the road, dragging their mangy mutt behind them. A mere "stick 'em on your web page" is all it takes to gain freedom from the prattling, infatuated dolt.
So ridicule ye not the crap web page. It may some day save you from a twenty year stretch for murdering an asshole with photographs.
Notes
1 unless the kid's name is 'hot lesbian action', of course [Back]
3 actually, they'll probably use some gender-specific pronoun, but at that age no-one can tell (or care). [Back]
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