Dear Internet

Dear Internet,

Hi there, I've been a fan for a while, but I've never gotten around to writing to you. Recently though, I feel you're not putting all your effort into the show, and I'm starting to get a bit concerned.

I remember back when you were starting out, when I could only see you at 12.8kbps - you didn't have too many tricks, but at least you put your heart into it every day. Sure there weren't any games, and no jokes that I could understand, but it was enough, and I was happy.

I understand it was a bit of a shock to your system when heartless corporations decided to exploit you by pinning naked women all over your fragile circuits and surrounding them with flashy banner adverts. Until the doctors got rid of that <marquee> tag I seriously thought you were going to die.

Then, almost as soon as that traumatic experience was over, the RIAA declared war on you and came in hacking and slashing with their machetes of +1 evil, but I think your solution was the diplomatic coup of the century - showing them how they can make money from the very thing they were trying to stop! Genius!

Since then it's been a pretty great time for all, there's new games every day, free music and video for all, and social networking sites that will soon put every bar and pub out of business forever.

But now there's a problem. You see, you're putting on new clothes and accessories every day, but it's like I've seen it all before. Sure your latest hat or webpage may be brand new, but it's nothing original and I'm starting to get bored. I've already seen all of the good stuff now and quite frankly, I'm starting to look at other women..erm, I mean publicly accessible networks of interconnected computer networks. Ok, I'm starting to look at other alternatives. Like real life, and human contact, and other such things.

Yes, I'm serious, this isn't just a cry for attention. So you need to start making some changes pretty quick, here's a list of things I'd recommend:

1) Enough with the MySpace - we get it, they don't have any real friends and so they make up for it by adding 20,000 people, bands, shops and adverts as their 'friends' instead.

2) Not everyone has a volume mixer on their volume control - so please, no more flash games without the option to turn the annoying music off.

3) The concept of taking pictures of cats, other animals, or people in funny positions, and then adding a caption related to internet slang can only be taken so far. Enough of this.

4) AOL is evil. Seriously, I was round their house the other day and they had these four African slaves who they made eat off the floor. And AOL's got a horrible floor. Please remove them from your gorgeous circuits immediately.

5) There's been a dramatic fall in the publication of literature and web-content related to pie. Please improve this, through any schemes or promotional activities you think neccessary. You have my full support on this one.

6) Replacing letters with numbers was cool, once. However, the species known as 'chav' have since adopted this for their own ends under the SMS protocol. I think you should look at either developing something even more elitist, or abandoning the whole thing altogether. The same goes for intentional typos such as 'teh' - since girls have been allowed on the internet, you can't tell whether they're intentional or not.

7) We need a reduction in the number of girls you're playing host to. Also, we need an increse in the number of girls you're playing host to. I'll let you figure out the semantics I'm going for.

8) I love Google, and I love Wikipedia, but I'm starting to get the impression that Google's in love with Wikipedia but the feelings aren't returned. It's getting a bit awkward recently, perhaps you could ask Google not to rank Ms. Pedia highest for every search, tone it down a bit?

9) When I want to order vast quantities of meat, I find it quite often takes me up to 10 clicks to do so. Clearly, this is completely unacceptable, and I demand that you improve this process dramatically.

10) Standards. In this free moral culture we've been living in ever since those hippies decided to get together in the 60's, standards have fallen dramatically and pretty much anything goes. Now, I don't want you to get too upset about this, but I do want you to take me seriously when I tell you that I was looking at one of your pages the other day, and I noticed an unclosed break tag. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you that, but atrocities such as this are being perpetrated daily and if we don't put a stop to them, soon there'll be anarchy all around. As such, my final suggestion would be that you not only implement a spelling, grammar, and 'is not French' check on all content before displaying it, but that you also demand that w3c standards are followed in every case before anything is displayed.

Thanks very much for your time. I'm having a party next Saturday if you fancy coming by the way - there'll be loads of cool people there.

Love and cuddles,
Ina.