Who’s Embarrassing Themselves on the Internet Today?
Posted on April 16, 2008
by: Big Jar
This is weird.
You are a trophy wife. Your husband, who is a major Broadway theater operator and a quarter century older than you, decides to divorce you. Since you signed a pre-nuptial agreement before you got married, you have no means for supporting yourself, and your future looks pretty bleak.
So, how do you make the best of a very bad situation? Post a video of yourself on YouTube, where you tearfully recount all of the abuses you’ve endured, slander your former spouses’ sexual prowess, and then call up his office and start screaming at the person on the other line!
Sounds reasonable? It sure did to Tricia Walsh-Smith, who is the internet phenomenon of this week. The video (entitled Poor, Vulnerable Tricia: One More Crazy Day in the Life of a Phoenix Rising from the Ashes) went up on Monday, and it has already received almost two million hits.
Now she has her own website and Wikipedia page! Well, she deserves all of our attention. Seriously, though, this video isn’t even entertaining in the slightest. This woman’s sycophantic ranting is intolerable. Why are you reading about this? Why are you watching her video? Why am I posting about this? Are we all getting stupider, or is it just that the idiots are disproportionately represented by their metaphoric megaphone, the internet?
OK, I think the internet is a pretty amazing resource, but there are some really negative side effects. The first is that it’s way too easy to blackmail people. Universally accessible information took all of the intrigue and guile out of the art. Now, even a self-proclaimed idiot schmuck can do it without any difficulty. Secondly, there’s no privacy. You can’t slip up even once, or the video you created of yourself doing sweet Star Wars moves gets seen by every job interviewer that will turn you down for the rest of your life.
It’s a cruel world. What did we do before watching strangers self destruct on computers? Maybe this is just the modern outlet for human cruelty. Since we’re not allowed to kill animals in public or rile up a mob to murder innocent people, we must need to exercise the darker impulses of our souls in some way.
Maybe this is better? I’m not so sure. What does this woman do for the rest of her life? What does Miss South Carolina do now when she goes out to eat at a restaurant? Will the grape crushing reporter ever be able to drink wine again?
These questions keep me awake at nights.
Is it fair to get punished for the rest of your life after doing something stupid once? I mean, haven’t we all lopped off huge chunks of our hair only hours before our wedding?
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