The Cardinal Vices of the Internet
1. Lust:
We’ll start this thing out with a slowball, right down the middle of the plate.
Porn
Pornographic sites receive more search engine queries than nearly anything else. To quote the Simpsons:
Carl: You're the Internet's #1 non-porno site.
Lenny: Which makes you ten trillionth overall.
Of course, celebrities tend to get more searches than porn. Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, etc… Nope… no one looking for naked sexscapades there.
2. Gluttony:
Torrents
Seriously. Do I need the entire 90 album Blues Collection? Yes.
Do –YOU- need every episode of Tailspin and David the Gnome? Probably.
These exceptions aside, if you have 4TB of storage space and you are running out of room, you have glutted yourself worse than Old Yeller at an all-you-can-eat lead buffet. Yes folks, I went there.
3. Sloth:
Dial Up Internet
Dialup Internet is the sloth of the sinful animal kingdom. Actually, much like a sloth, dial up is still around and thriving, it’s just that no one can see it or thinks about it.
“Thriving” means it’s a niche market that is doing pretty well for itself considering it’s no longer the primary method of connecting to the internet. Just like sloths are doing pretty well, even though people take them down from the Costa Rican rainforests and charge tourists $5 to take a picture with one.
Really, that’s totally unrelated, but it happened and I have photos. No you can’t see them.
4. Greed:
The RIAA and the MPAA.
Do you honestly think that I would have bought a Mance Lipscomb CD if I hadn't downloaded it first? Or paid to see I Know Who Killed Me with Lindsay Lohan in theaters?
Well, I did see it, but only because my hot girlfriend wanted to, and she later informed me that she was bored and wanted to make out the whole time but didn’t say so. My life sucks.
But Stay Alive or any of the new National Lampoons movies? You’re kidding yourselves. You’re probably losing as much money from punk kids boycotting you because of your anti-consumer attitudes as from their rampant theft of your intellectual property.
5. Wrath:
I’d say viruses, but has anyone actually gotten a virus in the last 3 years? I’m going to go with:
Rick Astley
Here’s the video of him getting drunk and killing a homeless man.
6. Envy:
Newegg, Voodoo Computers, FalconNW, and the like
Why can’t I have a quad-SLI, quad-core, nuclear-powered monstrosity in my home? It’s only $18,000! While we’re at it… let’s add Apple.com to that list.
Don't look at me like that? I’ve got a girlfriend. Honestly. I can want a MacBook Pro without having had any adventurous experiences in college.
7. Pride:
YOU!
Firefox users. There’s nothing worse than an arrogant, acne-covered computer geek telling me I need to download another browser when IE clearly does its job. What the hell is a foxy tune? Why do I want to restart my browser? And what possible use is there for being able to open up a tab from ANOTHER browser in my current one? IE and Firefox in one window!? Pride cometh before the fall. But there’s probably a plugin to prevent that too. Everyone knows that Opera is the way to go anyhow.