The advent and incredible popularity of the Internet has resulted in an outbreak of the strange psychological malady known as ‘Freeitis’.
Freeitis is a recent mental disease in which a person, growing used to getting everything for free on the Internet, ie. free downloads, free music, free videos, etc., then grows to expect everything in life to be for free.
Some of those afflicted, usually hard core Internet users, then start to expect these freebies in the outer world as well, going so far as to start demanding them from the society around them.
They go into movie theaters and connive to get free tickets, go to restaurants and expect free meals, go to the government and expect to get free money or forms of welfare to support their carcasses while they spend their time surfing the free web worlds.
On the Internet itself the afflicted wallpaper their opening computer screen with the icons from the hundreds of free websites and downloads they have gotten. Unfortunately they fall prey to the main disease that stems from Freeitis, the computer virus that lies in wait behind the façade of many of these sites.
This dread phenomena especially comes from the addict being tempted by going to those two prize lures of the freebie universe- porno and sites offering easy money. Once caught in the quicksand of these demonic La Brea tarpits, the user and his computer quickly become vulture fodder for they are rife with viruses as a prostitute with Ebola.
Then, at the other end of the Internet freebie universe is another phenomena, the more ‘intellectual’ sites for those whose lusts are not their dominating factor in tapping the laptop keys, but whose contents are equally as addicting in another way. Examples would be news, gossip and entertainment sites. (Did I forget to mention humor sites?)
Many of them get their content for free as well. The Huffington Post is a prime example, an entire popular news website whose whole creative base is made of writers and bloggers working for free. Of course, there is eventually money involved as Arianna Huffington, the originator, made off with over $300 million dollars when she sold the site, none of which trickled down to the writers who helped make the site what it is.
Add to this thousands of picture and photo and cartoon based sites and you have an incredible free universe of cost nothings that could keep a Freeitus infected key tapper busy for a millennium.
So far the only know cure for this dread sickness is to bolt the unfortunate victim to the floor spread eagle fashion, making sure that his fingers are taped together as even done up in this fashion they still have been know to try to type if a computer is anyway near them.
The next step is then locking them in a padded cell for a week until they either sober up or start frothing and crying for God to seek vengeance on their tormentors.
Scientists are hard at work trying to find less harsh solutions for this horrendous disease in between downloading pornography.
Instead, I’ll pay you in kind by allowing you to read my articles for free since they’re easier for me to produce than payment of any type.
I have to confess to freeitis adddiction. Free vids on YouTube, free music from the Internet Archive, and free books from manybooks. net. Please help me with my problem! (At least I’m not addicted to illegal downloads yet.)
It’s a catch-22 isn’t it? We all want something for nothing. We gladly pay $0.50 for the daily paper, but also see 30-40% ad fill. Online we want it all for free and we don’t even look at the ads. There is a solution out there, we just haven’t found it yet. And New York Times trying to charge $20/month for a digital subscription IS NOT IT. They can go smoke a crap-log in hell before I’ll pay them that.