The top 10 Internet clichés we’d be better off without, in no particular numerical order:

4) “LOL cats.” I guess these are supposed to be cats that know enough Photoshop to slap text on a picture, are web-savvy enough to know how to upload those pictures to the internet, but haven’t quite grasped the English language. Maybe these cats aren’t stupid after all--they’re just foreigners.

7) “Rickrolling.” Why this is a thing, I don’t know. It’s a bait and switch—you pretend you’re linking to something interesting, but the link instead goes to a video of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” People apparently find it hysterical, though it’s unclear why. Especially when there’s much better stuff out there.

           

2) Annoying “top 10” lists. It seems that every blogger eventually makes one of these dumb things, either because they’re too lazy to write original content or because they genuinely think people are interested in listening to them rant. Either way, it’s a practice that should be abolished.

10) Commercials that make fun of Internet acronyms. “People use ‘LOL’ all the time on the Internet—imagine how funny it would be if someone actually SPOKE this way!” It was mildly amusing the first time we saw this, (to be generous) but advertisers don’t seem to understand that it’s been done a bazillion times by now. It’s definitely time to lay this one to rest.

1) Internet memes. I think a couple items on this list technically ARE internet memes. But I don’t know what they are, and I don’t like them.

6) Twitter. I’m only going to say this once, but I’m going to say it loudly, so be sure to turn up your speaker volume when you read the next sentence. TWITTER IS POINTLESS. It serves only two purposes. One is to annoy your friends with constant facebook status updates, except that Twitter cleverly renamed them to “tweets” so no one will know the difference. The second is to allow marketers to sell to you. Gee, Walgreens all of a sudden has a Twitter feed? That’s not an accident.

But no one seems to realize this, and Twitter remains one of the internet’s biggest, most pointless fads. It will go the way of Friendster and Beanie Babies because it serves no practical purpose. ...Also I hate it.

3) Bing. I can’t say anything that this video doesn't say better. When you’ve finished watching it, search for it again on Bing. It’s oddly satisfying. 

5) The “You’ve won a free iPod!” girl. Spoiler alert: All you’ve actually won is identity theft.

8) Hasbro. Remember when they took away the incredibly popular facebook game, Scrabulous, and replaced it with their moderately popular board game, Scrabble? Their thought was that Scrabulous was ripping off their franchise, and so they’d better get control of it right away by releasing a bad facebook app. Good call, Hasbro! Instead of all that free publicity, it’s a much better idea to alienate your fan base.

9) Farmville. It’s a simplistic Sim City, where you annoy your facebook friends to help you build a farm, or rescue sheep, or whatever it is that goes on in this game. The worst part is that people seem to think that this is serious gaming, which is kind of like saying Marmaduke is serious literature. People actually go beyond the free version of the game and pay money to play it. If you’re going to do that, for god’s sake, try a Sim game first. It’ll cost you less in the long run and it’s a much, much better game.

I apologize for this list of awful. To make up for it, check out this chunk of internet awesomeness.