The Internet Is My Mental Health Clinic

The comedian Lewis Black, a regular on Comedy Central's Daily Show, and a stand-up comic whose rage-fueled sociopolitical rants rival those of the legendary George Carlin, once said that the International House of Pancakes - or IHOP for those of you who have never read the franchise's full name - was his "health club." He stated that no matter how fat and unhealthy you might be, if you went to an IHOP, you could always find somebody in worse shape than yourself. And, at the very least, that made you feel healthier than you really were. It gave you the illusion of health. There is something to be said for the self-esteem boost that gives you.

Over the years, I have noticed something about the Internet that has caused me to think of it in the same terms. In this case, however, it relates to mental health, not physical. Indeed, I consider the Internet to be my "mental health clinic."

Read the vast majority of blogs on LiveJournal, Blogger, or the myriad competitors. Read especially the LJ "communities." Read video game message boards, or the infamous 4chan. Look at MySpace profile pages. Hell, read YouTube comments, if you're of a hearty constitution.

If you are an average person - of average intelligence and average neuroses - then there are two undeniable impressions you should receive from engaging in these activities. The first is that the vast majority of people on the Internet are incredibly, irrevocably, irredeemably stupid. It is a wonder that they have enough brain function to be able to breathe, let alone type. And yet, these paramecia behind the keyboard manage to hit enough random keys to produce something that may - just perhaps, if you look at it through a squint after downing a six-pack of beer in 10 minutes - resemble English. It's uncanny, and it just lends credence to the popular belief that if you place a hundred monkeys in a room with a hundred keyboards, given enough time they could reproduce the works of William Shakespeare.

Mind you, much like the monkeys and the keyboards reproducing Shakespeare, this phenomena of the Internet also produces hundreds of ocean-going oil tankers worth of shit every week.

The second impression you should receive is that a disturbingly high percentage of the population of the Internet are certifiably insane in some fashion. The Internet seems to cater to the mentally unwell in a way that "real-world" society does not, and thus it is no surprise that the Internet does not provide an accurate statistical sampling. However, the genuinely mentally unwell are not the real problem. The problem arises from the two major "cults" on the internet: the cult of the victim and the cult of anonymity.

First, there is the cult of the victim, which is not at all a phenomenon unique to the Internet. In fact, it is a mainstay of Western culture, especially American culture. And, due to American economic and cultural imperialism, has spread throughout the rest of the world. The wonders of globalization never cease, do they? Still, the Internet seems to be entirely about playing the "victim" card. No-one is ever responsible for his or her own actions. Nay, they are always the victim of something. The genuinely mentally unwell sometimes play this card, but often the "victim" only suffers from one ailment: the aforementioned rampant stupidity.

That aside, it is fascinating, on an intellectual level, to witness the variety in which the "victim" card is played: passive-aggression, straw man, and innumberable logical fallacies. These people tend to have a veneer of false intellectualism about them that is quite amusing to watch crack and crumble under scrutiny. It is then that the raw force of their stupidity comes rushing out, drowning you in ludicrous statements.

Then, there is the cult of anonymity. Penny Arcade summarized it best with "John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theorem," in which it was demonstrated mathematically that a normal person plus anonymity plus an audience equaled a total fuckwad. Never has a sociopolitical "mathematical" theorem been more true and more tested and proven.

That theorem is only valid, of course, if we assume that person is "normal" to begin with. As I pointed out earlier, the vast majority of the Internet population is so stupid as to make Paris Hilton seem like the president of MENSA. If you add the "cult of the victim" and anonymity onto that, and you have a person who is what is known in the mental health industry as "batshit insane."

An average person perusing the internet should come to these indelible impressions: that everyone on the Internet is either (a) completely fucking stupid, (b) completely fucking insane, or (c) both. And since the average person outside of the Internet isn't one of those three things, how can the Internet not make that person feel better about their mental health?

No matter how screwed up in the head you might be, there is always somebody on the Internet more FUBAR, mentally speaking, than you are. Thus, you can feel better about yourself and your mental state. This is why I say that the Internet is my mental health clinic.