The Avengers Forever: IMHO

	IMHO: 24 April 2007 Page 23 of 28

I apologize in advance for a substantially gloomy editorial. However, I imagine most writers eventually feel the need to publish classic "what's the world coming to" rants at some point in their careers.

So, what is the world coming to? It's not just that it's getting progressively more violent; it's that people are becoming more unruly at an impossible rate. And I'm not talking about the growing glut of foul-mouthed celebrities like Don Imus—what he did was unjustifiable, but it pales by comparison to what "real people" are doing these days. Looking at the members of the next generation to come, the forecast is worse than dismal.

Personal experience. Recently I moved to an upper-middle class neighborhood in a relatively nice New Jersey town. On the surface, all looks fairly peaceful and idyllic. Living here is a real eye-opener, however; the residents exist in a perpetual state of fear—not because of terrorists, but because of their own teenagers (and I'm certain there are countless other towns just like this). Shortly after I moved here, teens from a neighboring community came into our condominium pool area and heaved the patio's glass-topped tables into the empty pool. The result was that the pool liner had to be replaced, the water system repaired, and new (unbreakable) furniture purchased—all at our expense, of course. A high fence and a video security system are also being considered, at additional cost.

Then some teens wandered into our neighborhood at night looking for unlocked cars. They found one and drove it around to other lots, where they broke into several cars to steal Ipods, then drove their stolen vehicle into the field behind the high school and set it on fire. If that wasn't enough, just a couple of days ago, teens ventured into the woods behind our units and started a fire. Had the fire department not been able to respond as quickly as they did, some of us might have lost our homes—at the hands of unruly children who would more than likely go unpunished.

Attempting to deal with the situation has proven to be, in a word, hopeless. One brave neighbor caught some teens in the process of vandalizing our common property and chased them back to their house. The neighbor stood in front of the house, called 911 on his cell phone, and waited on the sidewalk for the police to arrive. Meanwhile, the kids inside the house called the police and said the neighbor was at their door harassing them; the police then called the neighbor and ordered him to leave the premises, and that was the end of the matter.

In my mind, parents are every bit as much to blame as their kids. But where are these parents? They're either oblivious to or in complete denial of what's going on; alarmingly, they sometimes reinforce the misbehavior of their little miscreants by behaving the same way themselves—violence among parents at school athletic events, for example, is becoming an epidemic. Circumstances all too often thwart prosecution, though, as was the case with the clever little cretins who lied to the police about being harassed. On this matter, I place some small degree of blame on the police as well for being so blasted gullible.

It's the selfish, arrogant children of the last generation who are now begetting a whole new generation of selfish, arrogant children—times ten. And it's an excessively tolerant society that allows the vicious cycle to continue. So many people seemed to be surprised by the events at Virginia Tech; I was saddened, to be sure, but not at all surprised. It was all too much like a real-life reenactment of a video game (don't get me started on that topic).

Unfathomably, some individuals adamantly defend their right to be morons. One day, a few minutes into my one-hour-plus commute, I was very nearly creamed by an oncoming driver attempting to make a turn before I'd gotten through the intersection. I let him know just how upset I was with a good long horn blast. In response, he rolled down his window and bellowed, "Can't you see I'm on the phone, a—hole?" His word choice seemed more applicable to himself, but then again, he was right: I hadn't noticed that he was indeed busy blabbing on his cell phone. My bad.

But what's all this morbid rambling to do with The Avengers or this website? On the morning of 24 April 2007, around 4:30 AM, a number of servers at UplinkEarth, our web host, were hacked. Using a combination of sophisticated programs and brute force, one or more scumbags uploaded malicious scripts to the servers that modified key web pages, all for the sole purpose of promoting illegal prescription drug outlets in Australia. I'd have thought that hacking websites like mine wouldn't be worth the effort, but it seems there are droves of determined little scumbags willing to do anything to make an easy buck, and they managed to mangle a few dozen of my web pages in the process—including those on my incredibly obscure little model railroading websites, The White River and Northern and The James River Branch. Hey, lots of folks looking for illegal drugs visit these sites. Right.

Anyway, thanks to the sharp eye of a TAF regular (thanks, A.J.!), I was alerted to the problem first thing in the morning (lovely way to start the day), and within a half hour I'd repaired most of the damage, likely before anyone else noticed. It's gotten to the point that publishing websites, no matter how insignificant they may be, is more than just uploading pages; webmasters must always be on the alert for scumbags, and stand ready to defend our tiny corners of the Internet from peddlers of fake Viagra and penile enlargement products.

It's sad, really, that the World Wide Web has become such a cesspool. Worse, it now tends to inspire and amplify bad behavior. From behind their shields of anonymity, people will say and do things they never would in public. Plus, there's easy money to be had on the WWW (more appropriately, perhaps, the Wild Wild West). Why is there so much spam everywhere, for instance? Everyone hates it, right? Well, there are just enough idiots out there who click the little buttons that lead them to porn and drugs and bogus get-rich schemes that it's worth it for creeps to hack into every blog, message board and web server in existence to advertise more of this excrement, in addition to polluting the world with literally billions of worthless emails. Recently a big-time spammer was noted as claiming emphatically that he will do everything he possibly can to continue spamming, regardless of any laws or technical attempts to prevent it.

Evidently he's in good company. Last night I repaired a long-broken Feedback Form. From the moment it was fixed, I began receiving an average of 20 spam hits per hour for drugs and porn. If it wasn't for one very worthwhile legitimate entry mixed in with all the spam, I was ready to break the form again—permanently. I am so very sick of spoofs and spam (on average I receive over a dozen spoofs and 200-300 spam emails per day) that I've seriously considered just walking away from everything and becoming the next Jeremiah Johnson.

It was Robert Heinlein, if I recall correctly, who rightly observed that, when a society loses its manners, it's doomed. Any wonder, then, that when I encounter a person who is polite and civil, it actually comes as more of a shock than another shooting? I regret sounding hopelessly cynical, but I do believe that our society is well and truly damned. Given global warming, a warmongering moron for a President, teens completely out of control, and a post-apocalyptic wasteland called the Internet, amongst other depressing things, I'm actually thankful that I have fewer years ahead than behind.

And that's my humble opinion.

David K. Smith, 24 April 2007