Jag har upptäckt en fruktansvärd ovana. När jag vänder sida i en bok och upptäcker en fotnot, så måste jag läsa fotnoten först, sen meningen den hör till innan jag läser sidan på ett normalt sätt, från övre vänstra hörnet till det nedre högra. Men när man läser Chuck Klostermans Sex, Drugs And Cocoa Puffs så gör inte det så mycket. Ofta är fotnoten körsbäret på toppen.
" Everyone knows that the Internet is changing our lives, mostly because someone in the media has uttered that exact phrase every single day since 1993. However, it certainly appears that the main thing the Internet has accomplished is the normalization of amateur pornography. There is no justification for the amount of naked people on the World Wide Web, many of whom are claerly (clearly!) doing so for non-monetary reasons. Where were all these people fifteen years ago? Were there really millions of women in 1986 turning to their husbands and saying, "You know, I would love to have total strangers masturbate to images of me deep-throating a titanium dildo, but there's simply no medium for that kind of entertainment. I guess we'll just have to sit and watch Falcon Crest again."
This phenomenon blows my mind, but - apparently- nobody else is the least bit suprised. It has been my experience that people who are especially obsessed with the Internet technology (HTML designers, "new media" pundits, Lord of the Rings fans, etc.) tend to become extremely agitated when you start to talk about Internet pornography, typically because that it degrades the social import of the Web and insults all the bespectacled geniuses who create it.*
* One Web designer actually told me that focusing a discussion around the topic of porn sites "insults" the Internet, prompting me to ask him if the Internet gets jealous when I use the microwave."
