The World of the Internet Craze

In modern life, the internet is paramount to life itself. Offices struggle to run without the use of e-mail. Students worldwide have Google to thank for helping them in their academic successes. Procrastination is now many people's number one pastime. I think we're all in agreement that the invention of the internet was one of the world's greatest. It's been a positive. Thanks Tim Berners-Lee.

But in recent years, the world of the internet has reached unchartered territory. Cyber bullying and keyboard warriors spouting hatred from behind their screens. Online con artists, scamming people on eBay via PayPal. All of the frankly horrendous things that people do, that I can't even bring myself to type them out. And then there's the internet craze. At first, they seem innocent. A bit of fun, and a laugh for the people who participate, and at the beginning, it just seems like a game. Fair enough. But the problem with internet crazes, is in the name. By the time people start to know about them, they're crazes. They're crazy.

It started with 'Planking'. The humourous game where people would take pictures of themselves lying down in peculiar places. It began with people lying down on the Hollywood Hall of Fame stars, or in Central Park with Joey from 'Friends' in the background. People would occasionally push themselves to lie face down on a table in the middle of a packed pub. All honest, if slightly outlandish fun. Designed to embarrass the participants who are usually the kind of people who can laugh at themselves for the sake of humour.

And then it went crazy. It was picked up by the internet, and this is when it got dangerous. People would search for facebook likes, and twitter retweets by pushing the limits on a game that was designed by teenagers who were probably just bored on a Thursday evening. Attention seekers started posting pictures of themselves lying face down in deep water. Others would post pictures of themselves lying face down in the middle of a busy road. Five minutes later, another picture would appear of a "daredevil" lying on top of a mansion's chimney. All for the sake of an internet craze. It only relented and ceased to be, when an Australian man plunged to his death off a 7th floor balcony.

Why did it even get that far?

Then there was 'Tombstoning'. Arguably more dangerous than 'Planking', 'tombstoning', is the act of jumping off a cliff edge into water surrounded by rocks. Again, the name was probably invented by a group of holidaymakers looking for something to do during the day. Again, the act did the rounds on the internet, with people exclaiming that it looked "cool" and "dangerous", before deciding to try it themselves. Broken limbs, and serious injury did nothing to perturb people from trying it out for themselves.

That was until a 22-year old man lost his life after jumping off  'Devil's Bridge' into the River Lune. He jumped off a bridge for a laugh and never resurfaced...

So imagine the horror when I was listening to the radio earlier to hear about another internet craze. 'Nek Nomination', probably a game invented by University Freshers, is a game where people are challenged to down a drink and then nominate someone else to do the same. In a matter of days, the craze has gone worldwide, but once again, people have set out to prove that they are more "daring" and "dangerous" than others. Videos are surfacing of people downing whole PINTS of spirits, and whole BOTTLES of a mixture of alcoholic drinks, which do nothing but kill them. I cannot imagine why people would even want to attempt that. It's not funny. It's not cool.

Again, it started off innocently enough. People downing pints of tomato ketchup and passing it on. Downing a pint of tomato ketchup isn't nice, but its highly unlikely to kill you. What has annoyed me is that people do not learn lessons about how internet crazes work. They develop beyond what the human body can feasibly handle, all in the name of outdoing your peers. They only show signs of stopping when tragedy strikes and people realise what damage it can cause, and this is undeniably wrong. It has to stop.

Imagine if you were a family member or a friend of someone who had died participating in one of these crazes. Imagine how much of a stupid loss of life it would be simply for a retweet or a Facebook like. People always think that these kind of things happen to someone else.

Why not just drink normally? To the people of the Internet: Control yourself, and make sure for certain that that someone else, doesn't become you.