Many of you reading this now will actually quite enjoy the Internet as do we and many more like us. In fact the only people that don't like it are those that don't understand it and label a heavy stereotype upon its head and consequently those that use it as well. These days if you mention to anybody that you surf the web now and then, you can almost see the images of a stereotypical nature building up inside their heads.

In order to understand peoples various miss conceptions we have to look at the reasons why the Internet is so badly perceived through many a persons eye. So for the past couple of weeks we have been listening to people's opinions and looking into them, in doing so we have uncovered 'The Worst Bits of the Net' and thought you might like to here our perspective on it all.

What's so bad then?

When most of us log into the Internet we open a browser and check our favourite web pages, then E-Mail and sometimes newsgroups. Others often participate in chat sessions through their ISP or through the more popular IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Some may even update their drivers, download some games and application software from FTP/WWW Pages, while others will play multiplayer games. In order to understand what the worst bits of the net are we have to look at the above and see areas in which they might look bad:

1) WWW Browsing:

Confusing Information, badly designed web sites, pornography, piracy and commercial exploitation.

2) E-Mail:

Spam or commercial and unwanted E-Mail that just appears without you having done anything to provoke it. Unprovoked and immature abusive E-Mails from those under the mental age of 18 - usually.

3) IRC/Chat:

Unregulated and so people can say what they please, haven for hackers who try to get into your systems and pornography again.

4) Newsgroups:

Everything from bad language to child pornography can be found.

The above would appear to be the areas with the most problems, FTPs and on-line gaming are just about the only areas of the Internet that aren't bad, with any kind of retrospect that is.

Does it have to be this way?

So quite obviously people can become very worried about the Internet and due to the miss conceptions of the mass media it has become looked upon in a very unfair and unrealistic light. What everybody appears to have missed is that when you use the Internet you're the one in control and not the computer and thus you see what you want to see. True information can't always be perfect for the reader but then neither can it be in real life.

Take pornography for example, any child can see a naked women or even (yuk) man on the Internet if they want, but then they can do it just as easily by looking at the top shelf in the local newsagents. You see everything is variable; something that occurs on the Internet is likely to occur just as strong outside of it. The ironic thing is that with the Internet you have the power to see and show what you want, so why this has got so unreasonably out of control is anybodies guess.

Conclusions

The simple fact of the matter is that the Internet is a free information source for the masses and YOU are in control, nobody else. You don't have to view porn, listen to people swear at you or read abusive E-Mails or spam if you don't want to. There is a way to deal with everything and it's all in your hands. Essentially it's just like watching TV, if you don't want to see, read or participate in something then you simply flip the channel and or erase the bit you recorded on your VCR if you don't want it.

So next time somebody says to you that the Internet is full of porn, violence and is in general a horrible place, then you know what to tell them. Simply state, if that is what they think then clearly it was their choice to see that and such things attain to normal life as well. So ironically the Internet is one world that in the end isn't full of rubbish because what you see is what you want to see and that means it can't be rubbish because it's your choice to see it and nobody else's. Hehe wisdom =).