Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for April 12, 2022

For researchers like me, the internet is the best thing to ever happen to humanity!

The internet give the dumb a place to congregate

That was pretty dumb, Lars.

Pulling the plug on only the internet wouldn’t help at this stage. You would have to do it to cable opinion channels as well

It’s hard to hear yourself think when you’re intent on listening to millions of people all shouting out their own version of the cicada song (“I’m here, I’m meeee. I’m here, I’m meeee …”)

The internet has become an echo chamber. People get reinforced in their stupidity and intelligence equally.

From George Carlin: Think about how dumb the average person is. Now realise that half of the people are dumber than that.

In the Age of the Internet, ignorance is a choice, not an excuse…

Does this prove that Al Gore is an alien?

As P. J. O’Rourke said, “Who’s idea was it to connect every idiot to every other idiot?”

Seen on a sign outside a diner posted on the internet: “Without freedom of speech we would not know who are the idiots.”

Next thing you know, Lars is going to claim that he invented GoComics as the last bastion of civil discourse.

“Like, who knew all of human knowledge can make people dumber?” – Ronny Chieng

Wiley, be thankful this is the only way I can find comic anymore!

Lars, that might have been ok, but then you allowed development of the cell phone with the same capabilities as a desktop and the world fragmented into a different level of chaos.

Yet more “fake news”?

But, Aliens also gave us velcro and that’s worked out great. I don’t even have to tie my own shoes nowadays!

In the days of Archie, Veronica and bangpaths, the internet was a great place.

Did go comics start hiding images from people who use content blockers?

In military operations, there is a concept called a “force multiplier.” A force multiplier is an invention or circumstance that gives an advantage to a side which makes their numbers more effective.

For example, in the Battle of Britain, the RAF had two force multipliers:

Radar that let them know when the Luftwaffe was coming so their fighters could be scrambled at the last minute instead of being constantly airborne.

Geography: The Brits did not have to burn fuel to fly to the battle. They had twice as much “play time” as the German fighters. Also if a German pilot got shot down, he became a POW. If an RAF pilot got shot down he was back in the cockpit the following day. Normally, you do not want to have “the home field advantage” in war, but this time it paid off.

So even though the RAF had fewer aircraft than the Luftwaffe, they managed to defeat them.

The Internet is a stupidity multiplier. It gives unfair advantage to misinformation and disinformation.

We’re apes, not monkeys.

Then they tried to fix it by inventing Twitter. Huge mistake.

actually, something to think about, internet created by US military…

I have a tech question for the gang. I use opera as a browser. For 2 days, it won’t paint up the images on go-comics. Anyone else have this problem? (Had to switch to edge, uggh.)

Hey, we didn’t mess up the internet. They did.

I am ok with the internet, I can pick and choose what I want to look into and/or believe, I don’t use any social media to speak of and I can still walk away.

I grew up in a small town which is not unlike the internet — just smaller. Gossip, innuendo, jealousy, hatred, stupidity, etc. were all there as well. The difference is we knew the people involved personally. Sometimes that helped quash lies; not always. Sometimes that made it worse. People were still branded by things their grandparents [allegedly] did and were judged by how their older brothers and sisters behaved in school. Even when facts were well-known, malignant stories persisted [what’s the fun of sticking to the truth? That’s boring]. Just like on the internet.

I think Lars claiming the Internet disses some very clever technicians who, over a period of time with many false starts and blind alleys developed communication protocols that allow me to carry almost all of human knowledge (and stupidity) in my shirt pocket.

“The whole world seems to be addicted to stupidity.” Not the whole world, just Putin, Trump Sr., Trump Jr., the Republican Party, the January 6 Insurrection participants, the unvaccinated, and the Global Warming deniers.

There is nothing wrong with the “Internet”!

It’s the idiots that created the “hypertext markup language” metaverse called the "World Wide Web " that needs censuring!

And, yes, Viriginia, the “internet” and the “Web” are two distinctly different “things”.

Just because a bunch of jerks can mouth off in comments about how awful other people are doesn’t mean it is not a real tool for dissemination of peer-reviewed scientific information. Don’t be like Hitler!!! :)

Social media platforms are not the only means of using the internet. The internet is still a means of research. Just stay away from the nonsense that is generated by group messaging apps.

From the beginnings of human civilizations, it seems most advancements are used for one of two purposes: the other is alcohol.

After the internet, i do believe our IQ dropped a few points.

I guess it depends.I left Hicksville b/c of the dumb, the ignorance and wanting to cure myself of what I’d been raised with.Now the Internet has made it a place where interesting people have emerged, and others moved there. It’s a windy road away from Wine Country, and now wineries have replaced the pear orchards of my youth. If I was a young person NOW, I could have stayed there and kept my cheap house (that I could afford to buy in my mid-20s).

See “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid”.

The internet was invented for speed.

But the only thing that stopped The Pony Express was the Civil War.And horses don’t spread false rumors.

There are too many other things you can do with a hammer besides hitting nails.

Corporations are the problem. They discovered that they make more money as more people use the internet, no matter what it’s used for.

Like every technology from fire and the wheel to firearms, electricity, nuclear fission, and artificial satellites, the Internet can be used for either good or evil, depending not on the tool itself but on whoever’s using it.

Anthropologists generally think that the invention of brewing gave rise to civilization, because it preserved the nutritive value of grain (which was otherwise subject to rot) and thus made stationary agriculture competitive with nomadic hunting and gathering. But even then it was necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Has GoComics changed their setting?

1. Originally I’d click on the ‘number of comments’ icon, and all comments would show up. Now I have to click on ‘show all comments’ as well.

2. Originally, when I’d click on where it says ‘so-and-so replied to your comment’ the strip would automatically scroll down to where I placed the comment to see the reply. Now I have to sift thru all the comments and replies to find it.

How do I remedy that and get my original settings back?

If it weren’t for the internet, we wouldn’t be reading the comics now!

Lars is looking pretty bad … did he lose all his chlorophyll or something?

It’s true that a rising tide lifts all boats, but unfortunately, some of those boats really need to be sunk.

For people having trouble seeing this with their ad blocker on: ghostery add blocker seems to work okay and is keeping the pesky ads away. Had to shut off my ad block plus though.

Ah HAH!

Lars should have stopped at giving us the microwave.

I knew it. Al Gore’s an alien.

The Internet just shows us the truth of Danae’s assertion.

I so laughed at that! Then they gave us social media, and then…well, you know the rest!