User:Chaiyo Kaldor/Essays/A history of vandalism

As I type this opening paragraph, some idiot is using the most  to spam userpages, even mine. I even anticipated it! I can't imagine that this is the last one, though that would be about as welcome as the second coming of Christ, har har religious irony from my perspective. Now, it's quite clear that ill will and stupidity are not limited to the age of the Internet. How far back does it go? Well, after an extensive dearth* of research, I bring you the history of vandalism, trolling, and, yes, Piplups. Let us begin before the human collective can remember. Prehistory, a time before time (was measured using established systems). Yes, I'm talking about cavemen. Now, it's common knowledge that this is the point at which creativity was first emerging in art and culture. The primates were beginning to ask questions, and take note of the world around them. Of course, the flow of evolution dictates that while others emerge as the race more likely to survive, others shall fall behind. If you live in the same cave as the lower beings, though, some realization of inferiority may seep into the unevolved mind, driven by basic desires and impulses. Whether the superior being is raising a gaze and a figure to a storm, shouting out whenever lightning strikes, figuring out that wood under friction is hot, or trying to preserve his or her experiences on a cave wall, there's often a jealous lower being nearby to trip up human progression. Maybe he'll shove the stormgazer upon some sabertooth's den; maybe he'll shove the firemaker into her own creation (Awful lot of shoving in the vandal's intellectual infancy); or, in the case of the very first art form, he may just paint a whole bunch of buffalo, serving no purpose to the primitive memoirs, and then run away guffawing. And then get stepped on by a very lost giraffe.

However, after all this jealously and petty annoyance, the superior intellect won out. Nonetheless, evil lives on; vandalism just makes it from day to day, but that was good enough. The next step in the growth of mankind is coming out of the caves and under the naked sun. Once the human race achieved sentience, after the pitfalls of the stupids, it was time to build up these concepts of culture, communication, and technology. Man began to wonder why fire could bring both warmth and death? Maybe something out there wanted some people dead, and some warm. Maybe Thog died because he wanted to smack Thrag for telling him not to touch the fire. Also, Thog didn't really like that Thrag could tell him things. Maybe Thog never wanted understanding of others; Thog just wants to know what Thog wants. Least of all does he want Thrag's thoughts written down for years and years! Therefore, he keeps his mouth shut all the time and doesn't listen. After he burns to death, Errg and Hrr keep talking about how great Thog was and how he didn't deserve to catch fire, and that nothing in the world could have wanted that. Now, since this is the era of the wheel and the spear, those must have been useful and wonderful, right? Not to the troll and vandal tribes. The trolls kept complaining to each other how their wheels couldn't go straight, or why the color was terrible, or that someone else had a bigger wheel. If you ever gave a vandal a spear, you better start running, because the first thing he's going to do is throw it right back into your ribcage. Obviously, these accounts are just the extremes, but for many nations they proved to be expected from the worst tribes, so far, on the face of the earth.

Of course, the troll and vandal tribes were quick to die out; it's rather hard to defend your children while stabbing your weaponsmiths and jumping into fire. However, by the time Rome was steamrolling the world as they knew it and Egypt was replacing their clunky stone tablets with papyrus, there were new ill individuals sprouting up. Rome was on the forefront of technology for the time, and aqueducts were keeping Roman cities well-watered and sustained. Ever wonder why many aqueducts in the current era are just misused fragments? It's not that time has savaged them; Romans knew how to build. After reviewing ancient stone texts, it can easily be concluded that terms like "work ethic" and "honor system" were not implemented until near the fall of the major empires. Therefore, since Roman taskmasters couldn't have been too picky about which slave children and young adults to carry the vital parts of the man-made river, because they have a fucking man-made river to create, one can imagine that the troll/vandal anomaly, hereafter known as V/T syndrome, infected some of these laborers. Realizing during early, frontier-pushing construction that screwing up a few lower bricks can cause many higher bricks to come crashing down, these little rascals set up civic time bombs with bricks mislaid just the right way. Of course, this has never been proved, particularly because there's very little money in saying that little kids up and decided to rebel against the Roman empire, while it would help modern child psychology along by heaps and bounds. While slave children were silently rebelling against the taskmasters giving their families food for their troubles, Egyptian V/T victims were quickly realizing that papyrus was incredibly destructible. It caught fire; it was torn easily; you didn't need a hammer to break it, even though it was fun to use one on them; water would damage the words written. It was like destroying someone's thoughts with very little thought of your own, which is what the V/T affliction is all about.

If the Civilization series is to be believed, once you roll through all the important bits of culture and technology in the Dark Ages, the next step is to make swords, ride horses, wear tons of metal, go into epic wars, and invade Israel. Oh, sorry, that last one was from a bit of real world history, which I think was really caused by the V/T syndrome. "OK, we have this group of people we don't like, even though most of our religions revolve around their ideals planted into our culture. What should we do?" "Invade their lands for the purpose of our religion and only our religion?" "Hell no! We already did that! Stay out of our lands!" "NO U!" War commences. I really think that sums it up; pointless war. Also, the Battle of Hastings. What was with that? Undoubtedly, the V/T anomaly was the result of how England was outnumbered and outgunned, as well as why pure English bravado couldn't win this turning point in the history of what may be one of the most important islands in the world. The fact that such a sentence could possibly be constructed is evidence of this affliction upon mankind.

The very game of Guild Wars, and everything else in the fantasy/MMO genre suggests that the Middle Ages are the greatest age of earth ever. However, we must move onto the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolutions. There were two revolutions, but guess why all the things that were invented in the second didn't make it into the first? That's right, V/T. This is really like [Pop culture reference], and why there couldn't be just one [pop culture reference] from the beginning, as well as how all the [Pop culture reference]s were so intrusive! Anyways, the general reaction of the world on the subject of these time periods is "Why didn't this come up earlier?!" One guess, loyal audience.

Well, now we're finally at the modern era, in full machine gun, atomic, communist glory. No wonder culture quickly became obsessed with depression and depressing topics! Minor spoiler alert, the 20th century ends with the one music form that most perfectly represents human sadness: Grunge. Emo, while basically a direct application of a musician's sadness, may just make non-musicians laugh with the thick, clunky, obvious metaphors and the general purple prose. Grunge, however, was mostly actually enjoyable, furthering the model of rich, famous, bored, depressed rock stars. I don't even want to go into the middle of the century. Guess who I'd to compare to the V/T. Also, every technological advance served to increase a V/T victim's availability to others. The telephone gave quick access to nearly anyone in the world, eventually, with a good chance of anonymity if the recipient doesn't care enough to go look up the number. However, the worst part is that this process generated careers! Yes, the despised telemarketers. Eventually, when people realized that no one could possibly enjoy having someone call them right at the beginning of the dinner hour unless they're starved for attention and have no money anyone, this became less of a hated annoyance and more of a pathetic scene, much like being called by a dying puppy and hearing its weak whimpers, unable to do anything about it. Wow. I can't believe I just wrote that. Anyway, T.V. also provided an audience for people with nothing to say or do, but that really won't top the dying puppy caller.

However, the most advanced form of V/T is the Internet. Originally set up as a way for scientists to share data and other such professional needs, it quickly was used for other purposes. Let's just work our way around the porn bit, shall we? Anyway, aside from Al Gore claiming creation of the Internet, it's had many, many other purposes. Actually, that's not fair, he just made some comment about himself being part of the process, the media overblew it like the V/T cretins they are. Time was, you could make a website based on any idea, and make a career from that. Unfortunately, that golden age has passed. Happily, we now live in the Wikipedia epoch of the Internet age, and when it gets massive enough to absorb independent research for the sole purpose of the wiki, Wikipedia should replace whole libraries. How this relates to V/T is quite obvious; take an encyclopedia, make it open source, and make editing privileges based on the honor system and IP addresses. Of course some idiots are going to take the time to avoid punishment and continue to be idiots! If they weren't the most tenacious kind of people in the world, this quirk of humanity would have died out long ago. Now, I'm sure there's some other name for this abominable way to live, but I'm just going to stick with the experience I have here. The Piplup's a lie.

* Yes, I did mean to use dearth. It's just one of the little things to signal all the bushwa I'm writing. dictionary.com it. Seriously, bushwa is a fun word. Don't say bullshit, Scout, that's common. This production of Verbosity (d)inc was intended to represent a satiric comedy of trolls and vandals in today's society, as well as the general history of the world, Anti-Semitism, Al Gore, and Grunge music. If you take any of it seriously or troll the talk page or vandalize this or the talk page, just to be an ironic cakeface, I swear I'll learn to track you down by IP. What I'll do then? Let's wait until we cross that bridge to decide.