Your Signature

« February 2004 »

Welcome to You Are Dumb's first THEME WEEK. All this week, I will be highlighting five different examples of People Who Think They're Special Just Because They're On The Fucking Internet. Enjoy.

Memo to your giant, bloated, ugly signature: IT IS DUMB.

There are, as we have seen this week, many ways to spot an idiot on the Internet. And as I end the theme week, I feel it's my duty, nay, my HONOR, to provide you with one vital tool for ferreting out less vital tools on the magical Retardation Stupidhighway.

If the sum total of pixels in the signature and/or avatar of any given message or e-mail exceeds, say, 50,000, that person is a psychotic, drooling fuckoid who is not worthy of your time.

Now, 50,000 is a fairly arbitrary number, so let me expand on this a bit. A 300 pixel by 300 pixel image contains 90,000 pixels. At 72dpi, that's roughly four inches square. On a 17" inch monitor set at 1024x768, we're talking more than four and a HALF. If you're using twenty two square inches of MY monitor to put a giant picture of Super Saiyin Goku's head under your name, then I can automatically extrapolate the content of your message, predict the number of misspellings, and guarantee at least two uses of the "u r" substitution. It's Newtonian in its predictability.

Also, regardless of size, you will receive one NKP-IP* packet every time your signature/avatar:

  • Is animated. Double if it's animated to blink or flash. Quadruple if the blinking or flashing is applied to religious iconography.
  • Contains either a US or Confederate flag.
  • Contains the MS Comic Sans font.
  • Contains a drawing of you, by you, as your online persona.
  • Consists of more than one image. Each additional image adds exponentially to the NKP-IP packet delivery formula based on the number of these rules that image breaks.
  • Contains more than one quotation.
  • Contains any one quotation longer than 25 words.
  • Has a teddy bear in it. At all.

Here is a newsflash. These things do not add weight to your opinions. All they add are bulk and baggage. They are as sunlight to the vampire to anyone with cognition. They are a big red flashing neon "MORON" sign strapped to your shoulders and suspended six inches above your head. They are, quite frankly, counterproductive to your goals. Why would you want people to assume you're worthless before they've even read your words? Best for them to reach that conclusion as nature intended, by getting to the end of your message.

This is why we can't have nice things on the Internet. You keep breaking them. We finally have the bandwidth to mix pictures and text on a regular basis, and immediately, five hundred thousand people load up Microsoft Paint, type up three Psalms in 24-point mauve type on a yellow background, and start slapping them all over the place. These people need to be tracked down and have their Gateway PC's and their AOL connections given to the poor, and be forced to access the 'Net with refurbished Commodore 64's and 300 baud modems. After 12 months of probation, we'll upgrade them to 2400 baud if they've kept their noses clean, but it'll only take one instance of them using more than one color of letter in a word before they're sent off to a work camp in Bangladesh where their job will be to intercept all the Instant Messages in the world and correct their spelling mid-transit.

It's only fair. They made the Internet a mess, and now they gotta clean it up. It's all about personal responsibility, really. If they didn't want to be in Bangladesh, risking carpal tunnel syndrome from repeated pressing of the "y" "o" right arrow right arrow "a" right arrow "e" keys, they shouldn't have been DUMB.

* Nut Kick Protocol - Internet Protocol, the technology that will, one blessed day, allow me to kick you in the nuts over any standard network connections.