Internet Experts

Why you annoy me:

• In the real world, most people are soul-crushingly average.  Yet on the internet, most people hold multiple doctoral degrees in a wide variety of subjects.  Whether the topic is ancient history or stem cell research you can bet people on the internet know more about it than you, and they will be more than happy to let you know it.  The reason this is annoying should be pretty obvious.
• These are the same people who will tell you Wikipedia is a terrible source and an entry proves nothing… until it supports their argument.  When you ask them for a source they will say, “Sorry, I can’t link you to the dozens of scholarly journals because you don’t have database access.” 
• When it comes to politics, seemingly everyone on the internet is a well-read Washington insider.  Or they hate Washington insiders, but no matter what, they are well-read.  The Ron Paul phenomenon is indicative of this, since Libertarians are uniquely ignorant, and uniquely prevalent on the internet.  Libertarians are for reducing government regulation, and oddly enough they are also against civil lawsuits and support “tort reform,” whatever that means this week.  Well if the government can’t regulate and people can’t sue, how exactly is there supposed to be any oversight?  The simple answer is there isn’t.  The more complex answer is that Libertarians haven’t considered the implications of those two positions.  It would be like someone being for nuclear proliferation and against U.N. oversight not realizing that means unsafe people will get their hands on nukes.  That one anecdote about sums up the value of the political opinions of everyone on the internet.
• The train doesn’t stop at irrelevant things like current events, divisive issues and politics.  Nope, everyone on the internet is ALSO an expert on music and movies.  No matter what movie you like, besides Fight Club, or what music you like, besides Radiohead or Tool, you will find an infinite amount of people on the internet willing to tell you why your taste in music is objectively bad.  However, take solace in this: the more vociferously someone tells you your taste in movies sucks, the fatter they likely are.  For music, the worse someone tells you your musical taste is, the paler their skin is and the gayer their haircut probably is.  These are time tested facts.  Remember, if you love Fight Club, Radiohead and Tool you are definitely more cultivated than anyone else in the world.  In that case congrats on being a pale, fat guy with a bad haircut.  Now go run along and post on something about Transformers on the IMDB.com message boards.
• The last major sub-group of Internet Experts are people who dedicate their lives to peace, love and charity.  Yup, you guessed it: born again Christians.  No matter what your religious opinions are, it’s probably wrong according to these warm hearted souls.  These folks love you so much they are willing to let you know how much danger your soul is in, on a daily basis.  What if- in your ignorance- you disagree with them?  Why, they will simply conjure up the appropriate Biblical passage to make good their righteous position.  Suppose- in your arrogance- you find a contradictory passage, what then?  Well they will default to their time tested (literally, its thousands of years old) method of winning the debate: mentioning how your example from the Old Testament was overwritten by the New Testament.  Should that fail to totally convert you, they will be happy to explain how your non-literal interpretation is wrong, unless of course the passage is about something embarrassing like stoning your son for disobedience or why it’s good for a Christian to live in poverty and bad for one to be rich, in which case the Bible is clearly being allegorical.  How did these theologians get so wise?  They simply spent years of their life on in-depth Bible study.   What if you studied more?  Well in that case they probably were/are seminary students.
• Internet exercise/bodybuilding experts.  All the stupidity of the above groups, mixed with steroid rage, misogyny and a huge helping of insecurity.  Avoid at all costs.

Possible mitigating factors:

• There really isn’t one.  The one group of internet experts who are actually knowledgeable and generally kind are people whose expertise is on something tangible, like auto-repair, home repair, cooking, etc.  People with actual information to impart are willing to do it with pleasure because what they say has some value.  On the internet, the value of what someone says is indirectly proportional to the anger with which the message is delivered.

Contact me.