Ryan MacMillan

Well, so is the very funny David McCandless, who brings us The Internet Now in Handy Book Form, a hilarious and devastating spoof of the World Wide Web and, more particularly, the freaks and geeks who populate it (that would be us, nb). It pretty much does for the internet what Charlie Brooker’s TVGoHome did for television, which is to say eviscerate it in such a manner as to raise the most puerile of infantile scatology to the very pinnacle of artistic achievement. Highlights of The Internet Now in Handy Book Form, some of which have been around the web for a while, include:

which only ever takes you to a insanely joyful world of Good News, wherein “Economists retire” and George Lucas is to “rewrite, refilm all three Star Wars prequels” . And then there’s

“an adictive social utility which makes you think you are connecting with people when you’re just not” and where you can “tag your friends * like they’re objects”.

And my own favourite:

“The worst dating site in the world”, one of the profiles upon which is for a woman named “CosyNites” who describes herself as a “Film junkie alcoholic with scoliosis of the spine. I like curling up on the sofa with a bottle of red wine and a DVD.”

Sick, yes. Wrong, certainly. Hysterical, unremittingly.