Maxim Monday - 133 - Do Not Be Discontented by Life - Part 2

War On Pants

The topics I write about have dramatically changed. I have a huge list of topics I wanted to complain about from my old job, especially buzzwords. I still have fully-written drafts from 2009 that just need a little editing, but they haven't been published because they no longer bother me.

I started noticing this back in August. I subscribe to Charlie Stross's site, and his post about the then-recent uptrend in anger on the Internet phrased it perfectly:

Is the internet having an epic snit this summer?

I've noticed it everywhere my internet footprint falls, and other folks I've been talking to have noticed it too. On Facebook, ill-tempered flame wars spring up on people's walls. The discussions on Hacker News are so negative that it's become a topic for discussion in its own right. Reddit is peeved (apart from /r/cats and /r/aww, which are refuges of big dark eyes and furry muzzles).

It's like our collective fuses are fraying, tempers boiling over, or something.

At the time, I had noticed the same thing. I realized that I was unsubscribing to blogs and unfollowing people on Twitter. It's as if the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theorem was in full effect this summer.

I used to complain on this site a lot more. Those articles continue to be my most popular. Although I am sometimes angry when I write now, most of my articles are either happy or informative (or pointless, even to me). I like it that way.

It's been two weeks since I started this draft. Amongst dealing with Hurricane Sandy, Thanksgiving, the approaching holidays, and all of the birthdays and events that occur in December and January, I don't have as much time as I did a few weeks ago. I am publishing what I have already written, and I will include the rest of what I have to say in other Maxim articles.