The Internet should be switched off. Now. Permanently. 

If the years of serial abuse on factual accuracy perpetrated by Whackypedia weren't enough - best summed up by the Onion's story Wikipedia celebrates 750 years of American Independence - or the interminable 12 page reviews of new depleted uranium cooling systems for graphics cards on hardware "sites" run by spotty youths living with their mums, or the billions of pixels wasted each day by bloggers who fondly imagine they are Bernstein and Woodward uncovering White House criminal acts, or fan sites questioning if the head Dalek was painted the correct colour in the last episode of Doctor Who, or the Daily Mail spouting on about illegal immigrants knocking millions off house prices after savagely murdering Princess Diana, or the BBC fainting with excitement over the launch of a new beige Ipod Nano, or the TV evangelists demanding money with menaces, or the Nigerian scammers offering money with menaces, or sad losers who can't cope with life hiding in Second Life, or millions of sad inadequates conspiring in forums about conspiracy theories, alien abductions or Norwegian Black Metal were not enough, we now have incontrovertible, concrete evidence that the Internet should be switched off now, forever.

For the crass stupidity of the Web does not stem from the weasels listed above, but from the morons who lap up the rubbish they spout as if it were gospel truth. If it were not enough that people who cannot read without moving their lips or walk without dragging their knuckles on the ground spend all their waking hours watching Big Brother or soap operas, they now seem to find the time, in contravention of all the laws of physics, to chat endlessly about such dross in chatrooms and homes for the braindead such as Bebo and Facebook.

Show me a person with a Facebook page and I'll show you a person I'd like to use for target practice. And I'm a very good shot with a wide range of projectile weapons.

"But," I hear you ask, "What has precipitated this spittle-flecked attack on Tim Berners-Lee's magnificent invention, the InterWeb?"

Rick Astley.

Who?
Mr Astley was a tea boy in a recording studio run by the three horsemen of the musical apocalypse, Messrs Stock, Aitken and Waterman. A trio responsible for some of the worst crimes against music ever perpetrated on human hearing.

Not satisfied with inflicting a couple of Minogues and an endless stream of identikit hit singles on a gullible public, S, A&W looked around for their next star and their baleful stares fell upon their hapless tape operator, aka tea boy, Rick Astley. To be fair, Rick had a halfway decent voice that didn't require quite as much automatic double tracking and pitch shifting as was needed by most of the acts, but the songs were the same old formulaic 4/4 rubbish.

But just when music fans thought it was safe to come out of hiding, they discovered that Rick had been given new street cred through the abhorrent practice of Rickrolling, whereby innocent people were lured to a Website where they would be exposed to his tuneless caterwauling.

But even this was not enough to incur my wrath.

Straw, camel, back
The straw that finally broke the camel's back was the announcement today that Rick Astley is the front runner in an MTV online poll to vote for the best live musical act of all time.

That deserves repetition: Rick Astley, the best musical act of all time. Not Beethoven, Wagner, the Beatles, Frank Zappa or even the Kitten Mincers, but Rick Astley.

He's not there because fat cats in record companies have bribed people to vote for him; he's not even there because MTV is the spawn of Satan; he's there because you, yes you - the Web users - have voted for him.

I just hope you can sleep soundly at night, knowing what you have done. X

Check Out
Guardian
Wikipedia celebrates 750 years of American independence