The Worst Font.

The product of a diseased mind.

Oh, Comic Sans MS, how I hate thee with the burning passion of a thousand nerds.  It is the very thorn that twists in the side of all those web-browsing citizens who would read digital text for their personal entertainment and enlightenment.  There are, according to Encyclopedia.com (which must be right, because it's on the Internet), there are tens of thousands of fonts available to the god-fearing public to consume, process, and enjoy.  But of this steaming pile of unreadable, bizarre, poorly designed digital affronts there is one that outshines them all: Comic Sans MS.

I will not be using the offensive font here as an example for two reasons: 1) Everyone on the Internet already knows what horrible thing I am referring to, and showing it here would just cause them to lapse into a mouth-frothing rage/despondent wrist slashing depression and 2) Blogger.com doesn't allow Comic Sans MS on its list of approved fonts in its WYSIWYG blog-post-editor-thing.

However, there is a very slim chance that  you don't know what I am talking about.  For you lucky few, just open up a comic book written in the last few decades.  That casually written lettering coming from most of your favorite heroes, villains, and distressed damsels is probably something very similar to Comic Sans (hence how it got its name: It's lettering from Comics and it is Sans-Serif).  As someone with only a very passing knowledge of the comic book world, it took me a while to realize that this is where the devil spawned forth.  Who knew?

I'll admit, this lettering is somewhat charming coming from the efforts of your favorite comic artists.  It would be hard to relate to characters who spoke in Times New Roman, which seems so formal and... well typed.  But this rant isn't about the perfectly legitimate usages of the terror-font.  That's because there is only ONE place where it is acceptable, and that is in comic books.

I can recall a time in high school, we were all bright eyed youths then, computers were exciting and new - and the teacher had finally relented and declared that we may use a computer to compose our reports and print them, thus not having to write them by hand any more.  Oh the joy.  Our collective hands, so gnarled and warped from grasping at archaic #2 pencils for endless hours, seemed to sag with relief at the news.  And what did our teacher get for her great act of charity?  No less than four of those reports were submitted, in their entirety, in 14pt Comic Sans.  I died a little inside.  The teacher immediately retracted her offer and from then on we were required to scrawl the reports out on paper.

There is some hope.  These recent years have seen a decrease in websites using the terrible thing - perhaps due to the overwhelming consensus of experts.  A simple bit of Google-researching has shown me over two million pages on the subject, the first few pages of which even seem to be related to the subject at hand.

Want to read more about Comic Sans MS? Dear God, why?
A History of Terror
An Article on the font from Fonts.Com
How to Delete Comic Sans from your computer

The Worst First Post

First!

It's really the most despicable thing on forums, bulletin boards, and comment sites that you will encounter in your daily routine.  That singular, eye-gouge-worthy response makes my teeth grind together like drunken high school seniors at prom.  "FIRST!" is the call of the Internet moron marking his territory.  And I don't use "his" in the classical gender-neutral literary sense, because let's face it: Women do not do this.

Why do they lift their legs and spray their musky, pungent odor on our boards? Why do they drag their e-asses across the lawn of my Internet?  I have no real answer, but I do have a theory:  this is their way of claiming their guaranteed 15-minutes of fame. Imagine the following scenario:

Tommy is a 27 year old white male living in his step-father's basement.  He graduated from a public university with a four-year degree in communications, minoring in theater-arts.  He spends most of his day as a "Sandwich Artist."   During the day he glares dumbly at indecisive customers, scams free cheese off the line, daydreams about that new high-school girl that joined part-time on the third shift, and draws graffiti on the bathroom walls.  When he comes home, he spends most of his time alternating between yelling racist obscenities over XBOX-Live and trolling Internet forums and bulletin boards.  

His life is a meaningless vacuum.  That is, until someone posts a new thread on whatever Chan he was lurking on - at which point he SPRINGS into action - so heightened are his senses that his body trembles with excitement when the RSS feed he has monitoring every website in the world goes "Ping!".  Like some kind of wretched Pavlovian dog, he scrambles to his keyboard.  His eyes are bloodshot and wide.  He takes a moment - just a moment - to wipe some of the Cheetohs dust from his neckbeard... YES.  A pristine article.  He pounces, his fingers glide over the keyboard with a grace and speed matched only by those savants cursed with such genius.

"FIRST."

With the depression of the return key, his body feels a cathartic release.  Another successful posting.  Everyone will surely look on his work with an appreciative eye.  Yes, he was the first there - and in the way that everyone loves a pioneer - surely his deeds will be recorded alongside such brave firsts as Buzz Aldrin and Audrey Munson.  Tommy, the first man to comment.

Anyway, imagining it that way takes some of the rage out of my heart.  Maybe there is some sort of subculture race to collect the most "First!" posts in Internet history? Is there an entry in the Guinness book? Maybe there should be.  Maybe there should be.

Thank you for reading this first worst post, here are some firsts that are NOT the worst for your reading pleasure:

The First nude scene by a leading lady

Turing's Colossus computer, the first programmable, digital computer