IHaveNoLinkAndIMustScream™

I pasted yet another “link” in plain text today. What is wrong with these people? But that’s not what I came here to talk about.

One of the nicer features of the World Wide Web (there aren’t many) has been carried over from academia, and was in fact almost the whole point of Tim Berners-Lee’s idea: most people try to illustrate their arguments by providing suitable links, even if only to Wikipedia. Or perhaps they’re generous souls who’ve heard that Google makes 99% of its profit out of links and want to contribute; I can’t say.

Not Loons, of course. Proof is an alien concept to a Loon.

In the vast majority of cases, a Loon will provide no link whatsoever. Some Loons have actually advanced to the reading level of a ten year old, and are able to snatch a link off Google, say “Microsoft troubled by …” In an amusing 100% of these cases, the actual article goes on to explain that “trouble” does not mean instant bankruptcy, and in fact “Microsoft “ (substitute hate-figure du jour) has fixed the problem.

More subtle variations on this theme — if subtle is the word — occur when the Loon links to something entirely irrelevant. These links usually point to op-eds by a Tea Party fanatic, but will occasionally point to a porn site for no obvious reason.

Does this total lack of attribution affect a Loon’s argument? I have to say no, because they don’t really have an argument in the first place. But it’s a telling defect, nonetheless.

(Illustration and title pinched from Harlan Ellison’s excellent I have no mouth, and I must scream, btw. It’s got nothing to do with my point, but that, in a sense, is my point.)