Perusing through the blogosphere, I’ve come across a number of bloggers who find it necessary to slap their readers in the face with an insulting reference to their back-water web browsing methods.  Like a medieval doctor blood-letting a plague victim, I clumsily and cluelessly surf the intarweb with Internet Explorer, a radioactive browsing tool that threatens my wife with breast cancer and my dog with scabies.  Why only last week I had my leftern-most testicle removed due to a strange growth that my doctors said resembled “[…] Bill Gates’ brain.”

Lucky for me, I’m a blogger, which means that I’ve spent at least an hour dreaming of pennies raining down from the heavens, thrown at me by advertisers killing each others’ mothers in order to get a chance to slap banner ads all over my hot, sweet page.  The hour of dreaming eventually lead to a bit of web research into selling blog space, introducing me to FireFox’s pimping and pandering of weak minded and stupid bloggers.

Like a sloppy whore stumbling along a filthy inner-city sidewalk, you (being the blogger telling me I’m stupid for using Explorer) ignore the fact that your pimp slaps around only low-class 2-cent road whores such as yourself.  All the “pretty” girls who service wealthy Japanese business men have pimps with class, panache, and connections.  And they’re paid a lot more, as well. 

Meanwhile, you pray that insulting your readers with statements like “Wow!  You’re still using IE?  How stupid!” will persuade them to click on your pathetic banner ad and download FireFox.  You do this because you want the $5 FireFox will fart towards you once you’ve done their bidding.  And why do you do this?  There are a couple of theories:

1.   You found yourself e-friendless, and decided that a new e-image would rake in hoards of new worshippers.  You figured the best way to do this was to bash Microsoft (for reasons you don’t really understand) and load FireFox as fast as your pudgy little sausage fingers could manage.

2.  You purchased an E-Machines laptop because it was $399 on Craigslist.  Two weeks later, the motherboard exploded during an especially erotic chat session with your online girlfriend “SaseeBrittnee2001.”  Due to your lack of technical knowledge and your backwards sense of logic, you blamed “OMG MICRO$OFT!!lol” and vowed to buy a Mac with the money gramps gave your for Christmas. 

3.  You are a man, but few notice it.  Your shoulders look like cheap dry-cleaner wire hangers, and your arms dangle from your sizzle-chest like dead worms.  Your shirt is silly tight, because you like to show off how well formed your spine is.  Your pants are pleatless, cuffless, style-less, and brown; this is because you think wearing the trousers issued to trash collectors and gardeners makes you look original.  You’ve meticulously chosen such a unique look (seriously, no one else dresses like you), so why spoil it by using such common things as a PC or IE?

4.  You learned about Che Guevara in 11th grade world history.  Your teacher was a god to you, because he had little parties at his crappy apartment for students like you who “just got it, man.”  At these parties, your teacher would let his hair down, regaling you and your intellectual friends with his glory stories from whatever worthless state school he barely graduated from; tales of political activism and corporate sabotage that never actually happened.  You believed his stories, and you believed his endorsement of Che Guevara as a hero.  You also believed that only sell-out toolsheds like me use PCs or IE.  So you slaved away for two summers, saving every penny and every dime until your bank account was fat enough to support a bloated Mac laptop price tag.  You bought the treasure, and immediately felt as though you’d just advanced 10 levels in AD&D.  Two years later, you realized that your teacher had 11th graders over to his house on a Friday night because he was an unpopular douche hoping to touch the stinky hippie girl’s overgrown bikini area once she passed out from the boxed wine he served.  Instead of dropping the line he sold to you, you lash out at me for using what you wish you’d spent half as much on to do exactly what you’re doing.

 Perhaps all four theories hold true.  Who knows.  I’ve got nothing against Mac; a good buddy uses them and seems to like them well enough.  What I’ve got something against is the arrogant attitude shoved into my face by “unique” leftist nihilists who seem to think it is socially acceptable behavior to insult people for buying and using the product of their choice.  I’ve heard all the arguments:

1.  “OMGMICRO$OFTlol is a gigantic behemoth hell bent on taking over the world.  Fight corporate greed and buy a Mac/use FireFox instead!!!one”

Rebuttal:  Apple employs corporate practices as dirty and as greedy as Microsoft.  Thinking for one second that buying from mega-corporation A separates you from the “sell outs” and “corporate lackeys” buying from mega-corporation B serves only to illustrate what a vapid dolt you are.

2.  “OMGMICRO$OFTlol is totally unsafe and all sorts of viruses and AIDS and stuff will kill your intarweb!!1″

Rebuttal:  I’ve used a PC loaded with Windows/Explorer since 1992.  I’ve had a virus exactly one time; it was loaded by a friend who thought exploring the deepest and dirtiest corners of cyberspace would be fun.  Beyond my anecdotal evidence, the argument fails because programmers target what is used most when developing viruses.  If 90% of web surfers are using Explorer, why waste the time developing a virus that has no effect against them?  Imagine if all your readers/friends/co-workers switched to FireFox because of your whored-out blog ad:  think programmers will ignore all the new potential victims?  Do you honestly think that little ol’ FireFox has the resources to outbuild Microsoft? 

3.  “OMGMICRO$OFT is teh suck at graffiks lol!!!1″

Rebuttal:  This is the best one I’ve ever heard.  John Q. Emo sees a puny emo web developer using a Mac.  John Q. Emo sees a hip actor representing Mac and a fat unknown dork representing PC on a Mac commercial; hip Mac can organize pictures, dorky PC can only look stupid.  John Q. Emo sees the pretty girl on the bus listening to an Ipod, which makes John Q. Emo think of the really cool ethnic people dancing away with a really cool Ipod against a background that was probably created on a really cool Mac because really dorky PCs can’t make those kinds of commercials.  What is John Q. Emo, with his weak brain and fragile ego, to do in the face of such pressure?  He buckles, and consumes the gigantic unrivaled load of corporate brainwashing.

Honestly, I don’t know what the hell your problem is.  All I know is that I want to kick you in the mouth every time I see you whore your blog out for $5 from FireFox.  I want to grab you by your little boney shoulders and shake you around, scream into your face and somehow convince you that “YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS BEST FOR ME.”

Have some pride in yourself.  Grab your scrotum and act like a man for once.  Stop sucking up everything “the cool kids” tell you.  I’m sure there’s a brain in your head that works without outside help.  Take a week and discover how to get it running.  And take off that ridiculous Che Guevara t-shirt; it tells history buffs like me how stupid and brainwashable you are.