The internet is a wonderful place. The internet is a horrible place. I’ve read plenty of articles showing how great the web is for those without means to get a start on an entertainment career considering how quickly one can put material online. However, it is also a place where one can quickly put material online, no matter the quality. Due to the ease of placing oneself online, becoming a web celebrity has never been easier. So long as you can get others to share the word about “this weird guy” you saw on the net. It’s a success strategy with which anyone can succeed when they leave a piece of dignity lying in cyberspace.

And when I say anyone, I mean anyone. Two young men from my hometown posed in a suggestive position on top of a moving vehicle to turn heads. They presented their image to Tosh.o’s blog, and it was posted on the front page. Success! Action justified! Let’s make more photos and videos!

This is a cycle that we, the bored and sleep-deprived students, enforce. I, myself, am 100 percent guilty of doing this. It’s fun to see why another video that has gathered a million views got to where it is. And laughing at someone else’s misfortune/poor effort is something we’re practically trained to do.

Internet celebrity Maddox has issued a complaint about such activities (if you plan on reading his articles, take things less seriously). One of his articles condemned those who support stupid videos (YouTube celebrity Fred, in this case). He showed that the videos that get the most views and are most popular will be chosen for mainstream media because that’s what corporate media giants like Disney think we like. In other words, by watching cat videos all day, we may be inadvertently helping to build a television show, magazine, board game, or other uninspired products with little more than goofy cats spattered all over it.

He’s absolutely right. I can’t be the only one who notices that Eduard Khil is mocked on Family Guy or that the “Thriller” inmates are dancing in a Snapple commercial. Did you know there are three Fred movies? Check the bowels of Netflix.

Can we stop this before Fred 4: Rise of the Testes is released? Yes. With … a diet. Much like one would diet from sugary sweets in order to become more fit, I believe it is possible to treat our media experience the same way. Such that, just like we want to enforce the use of vegetables and grains in our diet more than treats, we would then want to enforce the use of thoughtful, inventive forms of media rather than stupid videos. This doesn’t mean a complete removal of cat videos from your day. Just choose what you want to endorse. I mean hey, it’s all your choice. Tosh.O is a very popular internet clip show, with Ridiculousness, You Gotta See This, Web Junk, and more on the rise.  But then, maybe Fred 4 won’t be so bad…