15 Internet Movements That Should Just Stop

Pinterest has turned everyone on the Internet into a hippie bag lady. You know what your dingy one-bedroom needs? If you said curled up and burnt book pages tied with a bow or a wreath of mason jar lids, then you would fit right in on Pinterest ... or an insane asylum. Perhaps the urbanization of the world has left us pining for something we feel we lost long ago. Maybe we want to connect with the rural roots of our forebears. If that's the case, plant a garden or go camping or something. Do whatever you think will help except decorating your home with garbage. If you can't resist garbage decòr, I know a great life hacker I could introduce you to.

We're all writing more than we would have twenty years ago; it follows that we're all making a lot more grammar mistakes than we would have twenty years ago. This has given rise to a group of vigilante grammarians who feel it is their duty to inform the world when they have misused you're and your or its and it's. When channeling their inner English teacher, these people insist that they are just trying to educate the unwashed masses on the proper use of the apostrophe. Let's be real though: the vast majority of these grammar mistakes didn't come about because the writer didn't know the proper use of a word, they simply wrote it quickly or don't care. All that pointing out grammar errors in a Facebook status or tweet accomplishes is showing the world that YOU'RE a huge tool who has no other way to boost YOUR ego.

Au naturel selfies belong next to Upworthy links and anti-photoshopping videos in the "makes us vaguely feel good but really means nothing" hall of fame. The idea here is that by sharing these just-rolled-out-of-bed photos, we are somehow challenging perceptions of beauty. Never mind that that vast majority of these pics feature the subject with perfectly I-just-had-sex-in-a-movie mussed hair in a flattering light. The idea that a selfie, perhaps the most vain form of expression known to mankind, can be used as a tool to fight vanity is pretty amazing Internet logic. And of course, it was only a matter of time until celebrities were caught wearing make-up in their no make-up selfies.

As it turns out, if you mix Maxim with The Lion's Club, you can make a shit load of money. This is the formula behind The Chive. While many websites offer collections of humorous photos and pics of hot women in various stages of undress (guilty as charged), The Chive has successfully made it a lifestyle. Chivers, as those loyal to The Chive are called, often belong to informal clubs with a charitable component. There are the obligatory keg stands and references to The Hangover that you would expect from your neighborhood bros, but they also give a few bucks to their favorite charity that accepts donations generated via pub crawl. Of course, mixing philanthropy and debauchery is nothing new. Your grandpa has been doing that sort of stuff since he got back from the war at the Elks, Lions, Rotary, or Polish Falcons. The difference here is that the guys who run the site and those "Keep Calm and Chive On" t-shirts are making some serious bank on the backs of well-intentioned bros, and we have to see the stupid pictures from their grown-ass frat parties.

If we had known that sharing or liking a photo could save children's lives and affect public policy, we would have started "liking" things before Facebook was invented. It used to be that you had to actually go to a soup kitchen or pick up litter in a park to justify being smug. Now all you have to do is share a hastily photoshopped meme and you have earned the right to be just as self-satisfied as your aunt who wears shoes made from recycled tires. If you think slacktivism is worthwhile, please share this article with your friends and family to show us just how wrong we are. Hell, tweet it twice while you're at it.

Most life hacks involve replacing relatively cheap household items with garbage that doesn't work nearly as well. Use a CD spindle instead of a Ziploc bag for my bagel sandwich? Okay, a) who has a CD spindle available to them in the age of digital media? and b) what happens when you make a sandwich with bread or a roll? Oh, take tabs off of soda cans and tags from bread bags and use them all over your house so you look like a goddamn hobo? My parents are already worried enough about me as it is. We even saw a life hack suggesting storing pens and markers in a toilet paper roll. That's one step away from wearing tissue boxes on your feet. For god's sake, spend thirty cents and buy whatever is being "hacked" at Wal-Mart instead of making your home look like it belongs to a schizophrenic.

It may seem strange to see this listed as an Internet movement, but bear with us for a moment. Is it any coincidence that the rise of Tough Mudder and CrossFit just so happened to coincide with the rise of Instagram? The popular theory of the last few years has been that if it a workout happens in the forest and it didn't result in dope Instagram pic, it doesn't matter if you lose any pounds. It no longer matters what results you get working out; what matters is how hard it looks like you're working in the resulting profile picture. Lifting old fashioned weights may be just as effective as throwing a tire around an abandoned warehouse, if not more so, but lifting weights like a normal human being won't result in an amazing hospital bed selfie after throwing out your back.

Since the days of Don Juan and Cyrano, men have been telling other men how to get laid. The Internet has taken this rite of passage and made it as callous and gross as humanly possible. Pretty much every young woman you talk to these days has had a guy attempt to "neg" her (insult her in hopes of lowering self-esteem and getting her into bed) or witnessed a man trying to "peacock" (wear a piece of flair i.e. gold cowboy boots or a furry hat in hopes of getting laid). And though many of us freelance writers have done our best to savagely mock PUA culture (you're welcome America), pick-up artists continue to flourish, furry hats and all. Why did the Internet lead to a surge in pick-up artistry? Chat rooms provide you the anonymity to be a complete tool, and until you achieve complete tooldom, you can't be a truly great pick-up artist.

We have yet to see a scientific study of the numbers, but we're pretty sure there are more nutrition and wellness bloggers than nutrition and wellness blog readers. The cycle is always the same. A berry or nut or something is said to have amazing properties. We're told a serving a day will cure whatever might be ailing us. Then these findings are cast into doubt. The backlash mounts. Eventually, the food is accused of causing cancer. Then, that theory is refuted and we're back to where we started. The magic bean turns back into regular boring old food.

Before we draw the ire of the crypto-currency world, yes, a currency without borders would be a wonderful thing and probably is the future. Just lighten up. Every so often tech evangelism gets super-heavy on the evangelism part and makes the rest of us tune our their message. Ardent atheists start to sound like evangelical preachers, but in place of a deity sits the hot tech idea of the moment. For the last year or so, Bitcoin has been the hot web savior. You would have thought that major setbacks like Mt. Gox's bankruptcy would have softened the rhetoric, but like any good religion, the fanatics just got more extreme. On behalf of the Internet, we would like to propose a deal to all of you Bitcoin enthusiasts out there. We're prepared to accept that Bitcoin (or something like it) is the future, if you're prepared to post about anything else once in a while. If you haven't been acquainted with Bitcoin zealots, we highly recommend following @bitcoin_txt for some cryptocurrency lols.

Someone you went to high school with probably posted this meme on Facebook recently. You may have been too distracted by spring break bikini pics to notice, but trust us, it's there. It's hard to track how this happened, but many Facebook users in their 20s and 30s have turned into the old guy on the The Simpsons who tells kids that any behavior is "a paddlin'." It makes sense really: the natural reaction to no longer being a kid is to think that all kids are worthless assholes. Why try to reach them with thoughtful dialogue? Why give them medication for their mental health issues? If we do that, then we can't attain the same sense of generational superiority our parents have cultivated for all these years. It's our turn damn it! Oh, I'm getting riled up. Where's my Ambien?

These guys want the truth about so many things even they can't keep it all straight. Over the last half-decade, the right wing Internet has taken shit-talking the Commander-In-Chief to a whole new level. Hard-line conservatives have produced a series of anti-Obama conspiracy theories that are so unhinged, many of them sound more like sci-fi Obama-Illuminati fan-fic than anything grounded in reality. You've already heard about them from your crazy uncle last Thanksgiving, but let's run down the greatest hits for those interested in a good laugh. There's the birth certificate, Benghazi, death panels, child re-education programs (advanced by Michelle Bachmann of course), confiscating guns, that he's secretly a Muslim, that Hugo Chavez funded his campaign, and our favorite, his Alaskan Weather Machine. What's your favorite Obama conspiracy theory? Don't get too attached to your pick, we've still got two years of them left to go.