What Are We Going to Do Now That the Internet Is Hot Garbage?

Well, it's been fun. Oh, it's been crazy and worrisome and terrible, too, but it's getting more useless by the minute.

Let's talk about some of the problems with the internet. I'll knock 'em out one by one.

• Trolls. Any idiot can say anything and ruin your day just because they want to ruin your day. They can lie, make false accusations, and just be a jerk, all the while hiding behind their keyboard or sometimes behind an entire fake identity.

• Idiots. Idiots can post any nonsense with impunity. They can be stupid, racist, homophobic, or suffer from an acute lack of self-awareness, and we have to sort through their garbage to find an intelligent person.

• Fake/Misleading News. What information can you trust anymore? A surprising amount of what you see is made up of people with an agenda or people who don't understand the facts or science of what they are looking at.

• Overzealous Marketers. This is kind of where I'm at right now. I typed in a couple of things recently and some of those paid results came up to the top. I wouldn't mind if the advertiser actually sold the things I wanted, but they've cross-listed and tagged so many things that you have to dig way down on your results to find people who actually have what you want.

• Knowing You Are Now a Product. Every click you make is being watched. That's right, everything you do is tracked and distilled down into information that someone is paying for -- to watch you, to market to you, and to market you to others. It's pretty creepy.

I guess we'll just write 2020 as the year people started saying, 'well, I order stuff on the internet, but don't do much else.'