A love letter to the Internet, ranted by a man who simply couldn’t take one more stinkin’ meme shoved in his face. You people made me do this…
I saw a social media post recently that filled me with such rage, regret, and resentment that I couldn’t take it anymore. Was it about politics or policy? No. It was about Mr. Bean and content creation. Does that make any sense? Hell no. Yet that’s the world we live in.
“Social media managers when they find the perfect sound for their Reel“—said the post, showing a photo of Mr. Bean wearing a tuxedo, playing a keyboard with a funny, yet satisfied look on his face. Or something like that. It’s so mindless I’ve already forgotten the details. You’ve seen this before: this meaningless, insipid, driveling gibberish that speaks to the masses and fills the voids. It’s everywhere, permeating our culture and our sense of normalcy. People trying to be funny, relevant, or—the kicker—”thought leaders,” when they’re clearly not. Look, I like Mr. Bean, but this isn’t about him. It’s about what it represents: the surrender of human communication and creativity to mindless memes.
Evidently, the official term is “engagement bait,” a dirty, parasitic catchall whose sole purpose is to generate “likes” or a quick comment—”So true! Cheers!”—which, in turn, boosts the algorithm and puts it into more feeds. Feed the beast, feed the beast, must feed the beast. Hear those robotic beeps and boops? They’re marching toward us, becoming alarmingly louder and with great synchronization.
And those comments—so witty and insightful, aren’t they? Though let’s be fair: most people commenting can only string together two or three words before their processors get overloaded and they must seek a meme or a GIF to complete a thought. Garbage in, garbage out. Repeat. It’s a shameful, never-ending cycle of sharing, which is ironic because this kind of disposable content should have a shelf life of exactly two seconds. It isn’t worth any more time than that; it should self-destruct immediately after being posted.
Suffice it to say, folks, we are fucked. I don’t know exactly when human civilization peaked, but we’re well past it. It was undoubtedly before smartphones and social media, and it’s all downhill from here. Plan accordingly and wear protective gear. Hopefully, scientists are working on a solution as we speak—something that will attract a giant meteor to slam into Earth, hurtling this wasteland into the vast ether, spiraling us into an oblivion where we’re never to be seen or heard from again. It’d be a mercy killing. We should be grateful for it.
Sigh. A man can dream, can’t he?
Future scientists, sociologists, and historians will study this era and conclude our society had an incurable disease. They’ll be baffled at how little we did with what we had. So much wasted time and resources spent playing on the Internet because, obviously, we had nothing better to do. They’ll shake their heads in frustration, noting a “declining civilization,” an “inability to produce original thoughts,” and a “systematic dependency on imaginary devices with a prolonged avoidance of genuine communication amidst widespread delusions of grandeur.” They’ll stamp the thick binder with FAILED in red ink, file it away, and move on. Heck, maybe this is a simulation after all and we’re just lab rats in a ghoulish science experiment. It’s the only way it makes any damn sense.
The person who posted that Mr. Bean photo—on LinkedIn, by the way—is supposedly a “Director of Social Media, Content Creator, and Writer.” I don’t believe any of those titles are true, and if they are, yikes. It all sounds hollow and meaningless, as proven by their latest effort. To be fair, the bar these days is indeed quite low. The masses have a pallor from screen-glare, crippling arthritis from clutching devices, and a worldview the size of a cell phone. The hieroglyphics of our day—emojis, memes, QR codes, and shorthand babbling (wth, idk, lol)—are a far cry from actual language.
What compels someone to post this junk, whoring their soul for an algorithm, trying to please people for a notification? It’s disgusting. And sad. Worst part is, he probably thought he was doing the world some good. He should be ashamed of himself and subsequently banned from the Internet, as should the mindless muppets who encouraged such a vile display of nothingness.
The late, great comedian and satirist Bill Hicks had a bit about people in advertising and marketing, saying there’s no justification for what they do and they should—how can I put this delicately—cease to exist by their own means. Swap “advertising and marketing people” with “influencers and content creators” and we might be onto something.
I’ll tell you this: cognitive skills and the ability to read and write coherently automatically put you ahead of 95% of Internet users. Anyone who spends their life on social media needs to find something better to do. Myself included. Quit feeding the beast and maybe it will go away. Escapism is one thing, but don’t forget to come back to reality.
And to those so-called “Directors of Social Media, Content Creators, and Writers”—don’t let me catch you posting those damn Mr. Bean memes. I can’t take it anymore. Surely, you can do better.
Blog post by Jason S. Sullivan, 03-09-26
Jason S. Sullivan 