The internet can be boiled down into two types of … things.

It can actually be boiled down into a vastly wider array of things, a soupy, lumpy, stinky mess of things, representing the wide spectrum of human thought and belief. However, that makes for a less dynamic starting sentence, so I’m going with two types. I will refer to them as the Curds and Whey of the internet.

Since curds and whey is also a sort of soupy, lumpy, stinky mess, I feel that the gods of metaphor will be satisfied and pass this blog post by when their day of reckoning is at hand.

Let’s start with Whey, the watering matrix that binds the internet together, the flotsam that keeps people coming back for pictures of cats, videos of people falling down, blogs where dads talk about their daughters; things like that.

The Whey can be summarized by this video. Consider it another offering to appease the gods of metaphor. Go ahead and watch it. I’ll wait.

Whey can be defined as things that you either really enjoy or judge others for really enjoying. Everybody likes at least some sort of Whey.

Well, us lactose intolerant people don’t really like it, but let’s not get into the digestive implications of the metaphor. I can feel dieties raising their eyebrows as I speak.

Then there are Curds. A lot of people hit a Curd and immediately turn around, hurrying off to find a video of a cat in a suit doing an ethnic dance of some kind. Those are the TLDR people. While some things – arguably most things – on the internet aren’t worth reading, they risk missing out on what the internet is really all about.

The Curds can make you a better person.

Now that I’ve written that down, it sounds overblown. Let me try again.

The Curds often represent the heights that we can rise to as a species.

Hmm. Okay, let me show you an example of what I mean. I know this video is a bit of a commitment, but if you aren’t making that commitment to at least some things then you really are missing out on he Curds.

“Apart from the fact that improper replication of the DNA molecule causes genetic disease, we’ve understood nothing else.”

In any other context, that sentence wouldn’t give me chills, but here it is, changing the way I think. If the internet didn’t exist, these ideas wouldn’t spread like this. Because they do, everyone is better off. It’s the rising tide. The good one, not the one that floods the harbor.

Not that you always need to agree with the Curd … people in a Curd … er, I’ll just try to be more observant of metaphorical holidays.  Here’s another TED presenter who doesn’t quite articulate the problem or make his solution convincing, at least for me, but he made me think and that should be the point.

TED is essentially all Curds. The Demotivators blog is pretty much all Whey. I really like them both, but only one of them ever makes me think about the world and how I conceive of it.

I’ll leave you with that, now that I’ve danced all over the fine line between interesting and preachy. Tomorrow I’ll return to general daddy blogging.