Some time last night, in between shots of Patrón and absinthe, I decided to reboot the internet. It was time to shut down, and restart. A reboot isn’t easy; had to hack the mainframe and close a lot of programs still resident in memory. Apologies to anyone in the middle of downloading pirated Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows torrents, but it had to be done. You know how sometimes leaving an app open eventually eats all your memory and the system gets sluggish? Noticed the internet was using 99% of my resources last night and, well, I had to react. But first -

There’s a somewhat recent trend in the movie industry, also known as the reboot. In a period of economic uncertainty, whatever the fuck that means, the top studios rely on what’s comfortable and proven. Choosing to follow the standard movie making recipe in lieu of taking risks, Hollywood has taken a (hopefully) temporary break on creativity and artistic exploration. The year 2010 had pretty low box office results coming in around $10.5 billion in ticket sales, but with over 27 sequels or reboots in 2011 we can expect these numbers to get retardedly high. Why? Because you’re all fucking idiots. You’re also choosing to play it safe and see the movies you’re comfortable with. That’s what movies, music, and other entertainment is now. Everything’s been done before, and anything new is just a rebranding or reorganization of something that already was. But the movie studios already know this. Focus groups and receipt records have proven movies with familiarity (either with actors you know, or based on products you’ve purchased in the past) do very well financially with very little effort.

Which brings me back to the state of the internet. There’s so much potential being explored and explosive technological growth going on, but you fucking idiots are still sticking with the familiar and comfortable. Gonna throw some names out there. Facebook, Twitter, Steam. All outlets we can use to troll each other, or have a little drama in our lives. Gonna throw some other names out there. MySpace, IRC, Napster. Same shit different day. As the Cylons say, this has happened before and will happen again. We’ve hit a wall, 20 years in. And it’s nobody’s fault really. It’s part of our primal makeup. Due to the limitations of our user interface and sensory connectivity to the internet, we only have so many ideas and will only take so many risks before we rely on what’s safe.

So, please, keep this in the back of your mind for now: it’s all about to change. Starting today, there’s going to be some changes around here. At first, it will hardly be noticeable but a few months from now we’ll get to look back and say to ourselves, “Wow, did that really matter?” And we’ll be glad it didn’t.

It’s time to shut down, and restart.