by Michael Bywater, h2g2 Staff Columnist

So you thought that things had got as bad as they could
get? Think again. The day of the Generation X-ers [sub-editor
please note] may be over, but what has arisen in its place?

Mindless scum, is what. Heedless of the example of their immediate predecessors,
the Microsoft Generation, with their focus on coding, money, dysfunctional relationships
and a really comfortable Lexus in that rather coochie metallic dove-grey...
I always wanted one myself, actually, the soft hum of the mighty engine as you
pull away from the lights, leaving the idiot lumpenproletariat dribbling
enviously in their disintegrating old vans, a big nasty
redhead by your side but instead... instead...

Feh.

Heedless of their example, the post-Generation-X-ers have rejected the
example of their parents (whatever the hell that example may be; I suppose their
parents were brought up in the Seventies, which has to have been the nastiest,
worst-taste generation since... oh, the Sixties I suppose, although the Fifties
really sucked and as for the Eighties, it doesn't bear thinking about)
and instead have become a society of drooling, flat-eyed monsters, slumped
in front of the computer-screen, unsocialised, brain-dead, devoting their lives
to the Internet.

And what do they do there?

While their parents only occasionally use the net for the purpose for which
it was constructed - downloading filthy pictures, trying to look up eclipses
and luxury hotels but giving up, and emailing their colleagues with torrents
of vainglorious bull about Proposals and Budget-v-Actual and This Quarter's
Sales Figures - the young are abusing this mighty monument to man's ingenuity.
A survey of 3,291 typical Western young
people shows that they regularly:

• SURF the "net" looking for information of no commercial
  value at all
• DISCUSS recondite topics - such as biochemistry, ethics and the dangers of
  globalization - with their online friends
• SEEK OUT new acquaintances from completely irrelevant socio-economic
  classes
• SWAP opinions about music, films, books and travel.
• SOLICIT information from people who may be able to help them in their
  careers
• OPENLY EXPOSE their thoughts and ideas to near-perfect strangers,
  and
• PAY MONEY for computer equipment to expand their Internet activites.

Which is where this column comes in. It is our avowed intent to stamp out
the menace of Internet Inertia among the young! To bring them back into the
fold of civilisation! To squash their insane curiosity
and gregarious informality! Western leaders
are behind us in the fight to preserve mindless consumerism.

But we, too, must do our bit. This column will build, week by week, into a
glorious, almost angelic paean to all that is best in the civilisation
for which our fathers fought and died. Watch this
space.