Where's Wall-E?

There is quite a bit of shit on the Internet. UFO fanatics, conspiracy theory lunatics, anti-vivisectionists with a God complex, vegetarians, creationists, white supremacists, Fox News and similar have caused cyberspace to become a minefield of mis-information, factoids and ignorance. I’ve encountered idiots that have summarised the complex societal and cultural factors that led to the Rwandan genocide as little more than ‘blacks killing blacks’; accidentally found myself on websites that believe Karl Marx’s ‘Communist Manifesto’ is really one of the ten most evil books ever committed to print; and regularly have to contend with Man Utd numpties that cannot deal with the fact that 18+5 is greater than 19+3! I feel sorry for the children that will grow up regularly using this resource without the necessary skill to identify bias and bullshit from the reality. And with fewer young people opting to take history at GCSE or beyond every year, a generation of unthinking simpletons that take the Internet at face value is all the more likely.

Anyway, I digress. Every now and then when trawling through a river of shit, you tend to locate a solid gold nugget of awesome. Cyberspace is no different. For every ill-informed opinion, there is generally something astounding to come across online that makes you think humanity stands a half-decent chance. My first encounter with this phenomenon was a simple online personality test (which, sadly, no longer exists). It was incredible due to its 100% successful hit rate. You simply filled in some details about yourself, answered some easy questions and though a complex algorithm the test immediately identified your personality type. No matter who or the details and answers submitted, the Windows pop-up generated at the end of the test was deadly accurate. ‘You are a cunt’ it would always say. Utter genius.

To this day it’s those little gems that keep my cyber existence sane. Lately it’s been the simple joy of a ‘Where’s Wally’ double page illustration, albeit supplanted with ‘Wall-E’ from the Pixar movie hidden amongst a host of other well known robots. It’s great! For a start, if you don’t like Wall-E then you obviously have no soul. Secondly, once you’ve found the little bugger (not really that difficult) you get the added bonus of attempting to name every single robot in the illustration. It’s a simple and effective yet highly entertaining concept that provides the same child-like endearment the original Wally illustrations provided. There’s Gort, Kryten, Twiki, The Terminator, the boxes from Terrorhawks, Bender, Tik-Tok, evil Bill and Ted, Robby the Robot, R2, C-3PO and many more. Try it. With your inner-child refreshed you can then look forward to tackling the jism-monkeys and skunk pussies of the Internet with renewed vigour…