How SOPA can save us from migrant workers and mediocrity

***SARCASM AHEAD***

Okay, so, I was originally staunchly opposed to SOPA from hearing about how it could give copyright holders the power to force Internet providers to block access to websites with infringing content without due process.  I use a lot of knowledge and information in my attempts to sound smart, so I tend to like the free distribution of knowledge and information.  One thing leads to another and you end up with a Josh who really wants to keep SOPA and PIPA from passing.

Then, Wikipedia went down in protest of SOPA.  And Twitter exploded.  But it didn't explode in the fun way (where it looks all cool from far away and then candy starts raining down on everyone).  No.  It exploded in one of the most flagrant demonstrations of collective human stupidity ever.

If you're too tired to click the link (I understand.  You had a rough night), it is the Twitter feed of somebody who, for the whole of January 18, simply retweeted people's snippets of outrage, confusion, hopelessness, and despair over the fact that Wikipedia -- which seems to have been the only source of information these people had -- was down.  Some of them had no idea why it was down.  Some of them had no idea for how long it would be down.  Some of them thought it was down because of a law that Congress had already passed.  And some of them thought this law that was already passed was for the express purpose of taking down Wikipedia. I can only assume that these people are from a parallel universe where absolutely no thoughts can be expressed in more than 140 or 160 characters (depending on whether you're on Twitter or your cell phone), because Wikipedia's homepage curtly answered all of these questions.  I theorize this, because "history" is the last word you will read in the first 140 characters of that page.

The most depressing fact of this all is that Herpderpedia only chronicled 400 tweets.  I haven't scoured the list for repeat offenders, but assuming there aren't any, then this is just the voice of 400 Twitter users.  Imagine how many more there were on Twitter who went unheard, or how many there were who don't have Twitter accounts.

The existence of Herpderpedia proves that we are a nation with no shortage of complete idiots.  And yet, we have so many people who seem to be unable to find work, who are reportedly overqualified for menial tasks, and who go to school, wrongfully passing their classes by wide margins because of a broken school system that lets them believe they've succeeded at something, when they haven't done the slightest amount of actual work.

So I will posit this here: Maybe we're better off without Wikipedia.  Sure, it settles countless arguments about who wrote what and when and under the influence of which mistress/substance, but it also takes the legwork out of it.  Nobody is going to synthesize their own theories about, say, Brave New World if the most compelling arguments on it are handed out to anyone with wi-fi.  We learn the most when we have to pay attention to what it is we're seeing, and apparently Wikipedia is leading (or contributing, is the more likely case) to a system where people cease to tangentially absorb information and instead zero in on the facts that are presumed the most pertinent.

And in this sort of society, I think it's safe to say that nobody is truly learning anything.  So why treat them like they are?  Does anybody remember what we did with people who didn't learn things, back in the days before the Internet?  We had them repair our cars.  We bought our hamburgers from them.  They were the ones who grew crops.  And it worked!

So yeah, censoring the Internet may sound like a really scary thing to us, because we're smart enough to know that the Internet has a lot of meaningful uses, but if breaking down the Internet has the side effect of scraping all of this out of my educated workforce, I think it just might be doing something right.