AMERICANS ANNOYED BY âALL THIS INTERNATIONAL SHITâ ON INTERNET
The profusion of international news available on the Internet has made it increasingly difficult for the average American to ignore the rest of the world, a trend researchers say threatens Americansâ long, proud history of disregarding anything not about them. âWith all the foreign newspapers and multi-cultural sites, the Internet is making it almost impossible for the average American to remain uninformed and apathetic,â said Samantha Lessborn of Washington State University, which conducted the survey. âAmericans can still do it. But it now takes effort, whereas before it was as easy as turning off Tom Brokaw whenever he said âIn South Korea todayâ¦ââ According to survey participant Danny Grisham, a 22-year-old from Cheyenne, Wyoming, itâs not just the plethora of international news on the Web that is irritating. âLook, I can get around the news. I just turn off Reuters headlines in MyYahoo,â he said. âBut even some of the search sites like Yahoo and Google are available in different languages. Like everybody in the world doesnât speak English. Yeah, right.â âI can see where itâs important if we are, like, beating some country in the Olympics or bombing them or, ideally, both,â Grisham added. âBut if some Colombian drug lord sinks a ferry full of Israeli soldiers in North Latvoania or Serbo-Malaysia, or wherever, and Americans arenât involved, what has that got to do with me?â Other respondents said they were appalled, not just by the availability of non-U.S. news, but by the way important U.S. news is reported by some of these foreign sites. âYesterday, for instance, the St. Louis Rams beat the Atlanta Falcons, OK, and I go to the London Times site and itâs not even there,â said Chip Pernadge of Kansas City, Mo. âJesus, no wonder those guys lost the war and had to give Hong Kong back to Canada.â Sensing a market opportunity, Net Nanny, makers of Net Nanny filtering software, announced this week it will introduce NetNarrow, an English-only product that automatically filters out content that appears to be international. Specifically, the software looks for world datelines and keywords indicative of irrelevant foreign stories, including âShiite,â âpost-Apartheid,â and âBob Geldof.â Survey-taker Craig Barker of Brooklyn, New York, said he will be among the first to get NetNarrow. âOn the Web, there are so many ways to get news from so many different places, I could really get some fresh insights into whatâs going on in other countries if I wanted to,â he said. âBut I donât want to.â âYouâd think these Internet people would know that,â Barker added. âI mean, thatâs why the Internet is called America Online, right? Itâs supposed to be about America.â Editorâs Note: It seems that after reading this entirely fictional story, some investors/customers of Net Nanny believed the company actually was going to produce NetNarrow software. As a result, Net Nanny asked SatireWire to please assure people that this is not the case. No, really.