Dignity in Tales of Transhumanism

Dignity, or the desire to maintain ones composure, integrity, and respect, even in the face of adversity, is a hard-sought goal, striven for throughout history -though it is only now, through the horrific discovery of the inter-tubes, that it has become truly unattainable. In this modern age, netizens have explored a plethora of methods in an attempt to achieve dignity - and they have all failed, in astounding, plummeting, and even epic, ways.

The grand story of human history is oft times the story of how man attempts, however cloying or cringeworthy, to be dignified. The myriad ways this has been attempted have shifted from culture to culture, and time to time, but the underlying story is always the same: People wind up in states of embarrassing undress, are humiliated in various fashions, or are slaughtered in undignified ways.

Discovered by Ted Stevens in 2007, the internet presents the peak of human failure, existing as a monumental cesspool, filled with desperate losers with unrealistic expectations and nerdy teenage boys with bad skin who strive endlessly to win the admiration of their e-peers in those long, awkward years where they are shunned by both society and the objects of their sexual desire.

Naturally, the lengths individuals go to in their attempts to achieve dignity will frequently result in a public humiliation so severe that they may eventually cast themselves off this mortal coil.

Unfortunately, not nearly enough of them do.

Everyone on The Internet is an attention-starved whore with SOMETHING TO SAY. This phenomenon began in the late twentieth century, but blissfully remained the province of a small few until the whole www/internet thing was forced on an unsuspecting public by cash-hungry venture capitalists and the egomaniacal con-artists who fleeced them for money through the clever use of powerpoint-ready business plans.

By way of this, a great deal of hype and advertising watered an evil seed in the hearts of many:

Inner voice prima: You have something to say!
Inner voice secunda: I do???
Inner voice prima: Yes! And you can do it on The Internet! People will listen and you will be their sage!
Inner voice secunda: Wow! Maybe I am special snowflake after all!

And so it began, first it was a trickle, then a torrent, until finally the internet was filled with a noise not unlike the clanging of gongs and the clashing of cymbals. Web 0.9 was not a dignified place, but the descent into unholy undignified madness did not begin in earnest until the dot com boom, after which a peaceful time had been lost, a time where useful pages of drug and bomb-making instructions were not as easily found; a time where furries could not as easily find each other in order to justify their own personal failings.

And so we come to the "blogosphere". Whilst OpenDiary was technically the first, Livejournal was the original motherlode of blogs. It's emo userbase exploded in the early years of the first decade of the twenty-first century - it quickly and deservedly became known as the place to whine about one's parents, one's significant other, or any other petty travail which afflicted its original, middle-class, fifteen-to-twenty-something-year-old demographic. As one could guess, it instantly filled with undignified drama from the moment of its horrific birth onto the shores of the internet.

It has been left to historians of another age to determine whether or not anyone on Livejournal ever bothered to attempt to achieve dignity, but for those so close to the dramatic epicenter of all internet drama, to ping long into that abyss is to risk the abyss pinging back, and to begin the slow descent from lulz to self-cutting and eventual suicide.

And now? Here we are on PB, and oh, how the circlejerk keeps jerkin'. Still, it will be fun to see where this takes us. Well, you, anyway.