It actually is kind of serious business.

May 25, 2009 4:25 PM

I, too, am trying to find a comment I'm almost certain I read on the Blue. It was a refutation of the glib, "The internets is serious business!"-style dismissal of people who would deign to take anything said online to heart. The tone of the comment was something to the effect of, "Sure, it's no big deal, it has only connected much of the world's population in ways only dreamed of," or something. I'm not doing it justice, nor am I trying to. The commenter might have been quoting someone else. Many thanks to anyone who can locate this!
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas to MetaFilter-related at 4:25 PM (12 comments total)

Could you be thinking of kindall's 2001 comment, often linked by stavrosthewonderchicken?
posted by cgc373 at 4:54 PM on May 25

That was the comment I thought of as well. There's another one that I can't quite place, though; could be one of Pastabagel's.
posted by danb at 5:57 PM on May 25

Great comment, and thanks for showing it to me, but that's not it.
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 6:01 PM on May 25

Loquacious?
posted by Divine_Wino at 6:21 PM on May 25

sixcolors?
posted by gman at 6:54 PM on May 25 [1 favorite]

It was probably one of mine. I'm known for saying incredibly witty and still poignant things around these parts. I'd find it for you myself, but it'd probably do you some good to search through my backlog of musings.

Many a man has gained great insight from the trip.
posted by graventy at 7:34 PM on May 25 [5 favorites]

I have certainly said words to that effect, but I suspect so have a lot of people.
posted by drjimmy11 at 7:49 PM on May 25 [1 favorite]

cgc373 -- if there ever was a time that I was thankful for our current mods and the $5 entry fee, this is it. That thread is a brief glimpse into an unregulated MeFi..
posted by spiderskull at 11:09 PM on May 25

The thing is, since the Internet is such a large, heterogeneous network connecting equally diverse people for tons of different reasons, we shouldn't say that it's "serious business" or that it's not. Parts of it are, and parts of it aren't.
posted by philomathoholic at 11:30 PM on May 25

Holy crap, that camgirls thread was an epic trainwreck, covered in sparkles and those obnoxious bunny "you are dumb and that makes me sad" stickers.
posted by shiu mai baby at 6:49 AM on May 26

Try hitting a g-spot on a bouncing castle and you'll know what frustration really is.
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:34 AM on May 27

Could it be this?

"It never ceases to amaze me to hear experts who tout the importance of "civil society" and "joining together" characterize the web as a place where neither exists--that is, if they mention it all. Case in point: the book "Bowling Alone," which famously diagnosed the U.S. in an associational crisis at the very frakkin' moment millions of people were making new connections online. The irony of scholarship that relies on network theory while missing the decade's most important expression of networked behavior should not be lost on anyone, yet years later the book remains a classic in its field."
MeTa: GiveWell, or give 'm hell? (posted by jefftrexler at 12:37 PM on January 3)
posted by rjs at 2:42 PM on May 31