The Growth of Internet
Terrorism
On a cool February 4th
morning of 2004, (only one of many cool February 4th mornings that year), at a
newly formed website called Facebook, the following post appeared:
"What is a MOM? A
MOM is someone who will stand beside you and pick you up when you are knocked
down. But what if she just stands there and watches you wiggling in the dirt,
then what? Well, it might be for your own good. But then she holds you down and
tries to make you eat something, like some kind of soup,that you don't even
want-- how is that any good? Well, maybe it is. Maybe not. Do you have a MOM
you're not doing anything with? Then please share. Please share this post."
Even though there were
only six members of Facebook at the time (and the Winklevoss twins were being
petulant and downright pissy) this post caused the Internet to explode.
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, Al Gore was still storing the Internet
in his garage at this time. The entire building was decimated by the explosion,
along with two neighborhood cats who just happened to be walking by looking for
something to do. An elderly man pushing an empty baby carriage was also injured
and remains on life-support. A '57 Ford that Al was rebuilding was reduced to
parts. As were the cats.
A few months later, a
nascent Internet sensation named Kim Kardashian pulled a back muscle while
attempting to take a selfie of her derrière without the benefit of a mirror.
Kim was hospitalized and put in the same room as the baby carriage guy, until
she complained and got a private room.
Once again, the Internet
exploded over all this, with people thinking that the close-up derrière selfie
was a photo of a moonscape sent back by Astronauts orbiting the lunar surface.
By that time, Kim's ass had gone viral, but so had her immune system, a byproduct
of sharing that hospital room with that old baby carriage guy, who had picked
up enough viruses in his lifetime to supersaturate the Center for Disease
Control in Atlanta.
Once the virus hit Kim's
lower intestinal track, it wasn't the Internet that exploded, but rather her
derrière itself, over and over again, for a very painful and debilitating
twenty-four hours. Kim's step-father had been Bruce Jenner, the Olympic
Decathlon winner, declared "The Greatest Male Athlete in the World,"
but he changed into Kaitlyn Jenner, holding on to his last name but little
else, which caused the Internet to explode once again because everyone had to
rethink the original question, "What is. MOM?" Was Keitlyn now Kim
Kardashians's step-mom?
The National Security Administration
decided that all of these explosions within the course of just few months had
to be more than coincidental, and it declared both events to be acts of
terrorism by a yet to be named or even founded Middle Eastern religious sect.
Soon after that, everyone was taking their shoes off at the airport. The newly
formed Department of Homeland Security looked into the phenomenon and decided
that the problem was rooted in bunion discomfort rather than being a political
statement , as previously thought. Striving to be proactive rather than
reactive, the DHS decreed that prior to boarding the plane, all passengers were
required to put their shoes back on, but on the wrong feet and worn loose. And
no peanuts were allowed during the flight.
In a counter-move, the
NRA introduced a bill in Congress requiring all known terrorists to carry an
assault rifle or at least a hand gun before boarding any domestic or
international flights.
Then, the National
Organization of Household Domestic Workers complained that there were not
enough domestic flights to get them to work each morning, and so things really
started getting weird. Then, a deranged peanut farmer, posing as an
international terrorist and angry at the on-flight peanut band, shot up a
Sunglass Hut at Los Angelas's LAX airport, leading many critics to speculate
that LAX security was indeed too lax. But locals insisted that everything out
that way had always been that way.
Eventually, the public at
large came to realize that the Internet could not only serve as a tool for
terrorism, but also as a tool for increasing knowledge and self-awareness. A
committee was formed to research the question of "What is a Mom?" The
group stumbled around for a bit, but finally arrived at the decision that a Mom
was any female who had given birth. This conclusion was met with skepticism and
derision. People in chat-rooms began asking, "What about Kim Kardasian's
step-mom, huh, what about that?" Then people in chat-rooms began asking,
"When can we get out of this chat-room? It just seems like we've been in
here a long time, and what's left to chat about?"
Finally, the Internet
became recognized as the storehouse of all human knowledge, which in turn
proved to be disappointingly feeble, mostly just pictures of cats and canned
stupid sayings and questions... so many unanswered questions, questions like,
"What is a Mom?"
Al Gore lost weight and re-married, and do Internet terrorism
had come full circle.
