Dear Internet,

Dear Internet,

I think you and I have grown apart over the years. Sure, your message boards consume my time, and your video sites provide me with entertainment. But your networking sites have grown into a beast, ravenous and hungry for the next person to consume. It's become a disease 1000x more potent than pornography, and just as voyeuristic.

I got sucked into your Friendster first, then the Myspace and Facebook. Maybe I even signed up for a couple others I've forgotten about. But it's reached the breaking point, Internet. because I just came across My Death Space, and it feels like I've found a door I shouldn't have opened and nobody should have built in the first place.

Why, Internet, did you allow your scions to create this? What's the purpose of a site that loosely connects dead people through a site they went to? It doesn't seem all that clever. It just seems like a collection of Thanatos drive fascinations tackily claimed as a "tribute." The causes of death are included, and a little bit about it. If it proclaims to be a tribute, why do you link to a YTMND Page on a Teenage Girl's Suicide?

Death is an inevitable part of life, and is probably taken too seriously. But here, it's taken almost as something else entirely. It's a collection of murderers, murdered, suicides and accidents. The only common bond, in fact, is Myspace. This makes me wonder how anyone conceptualized this site, and why.

So, dear Internet, if I'm going to encounter death in your throes, can't it at least be in a form that actually confronts it rather than exploits it, like say the YouTube rebroadcast of Mr. Hooper's death on Sesame Street? It made me cry a little, and think a little, but didn't make me scratch my head or feel a little vomit in the back of my throat. If you want confessional, go to Post Secret to see how to do it in a way that has something genuine behind it.

Sincerely,

John Wenz

P.S. - Can you find a way to get a torrent of Larry the Cable Guy, Health Inspector out so Ben and I can watch it without giving that ass-hat our money?