The most fascinating aspect of the internet is the paradox of possibility it places upon the human race. Like telephones and airplanes before it, the internet makes possible a global connectivity and communication at a scale we never imagined before, but it’s become so inundated with information that the overwhelming majority of it will be lost to the void, for most. Hence, the paradox of possibility.
We rarely get to observe the most entertaining part of this phenomenon. You see, when something gets released onto the internet and manages to escape the void, it will likely mutate into a referential menace that grows stronger with every passing repost.
But it doesn’t end there; once every thousand or so terabytes, one lucky bundle of data takes on a very prominent, very tangible, and far more permanent form in the real world. TikTok‘s @ameliasamson was the catalyst for one such case.
Amelia begins her story by recounting a night familiar to many of us; a house party turned into a battleground between alcohol poisoning and one tenacious attendee, and 911 was quickly rung up before the latter succumbed to their bad decisions. Amongst the posse of firefighters that responded to the call was a certain mustachioed gent that made Amelia’s heart flutter just a little bit.
Backed by Cupid’s relentless urging, Amelia scoured the online roster of firefighters at the local department to see if she could find out more about him, but sadly came up short. This would deter Amelia for all of four milliseconds before she hatched her backup plan; scribble a stick man on a piece of paper — complete with a geometrically satisfying mustache, and a codex of all the info that mattered (i.e. his height) — and set out to ask the neighborhood if they knew who this man was.
This excursion was more successful, except Amelia also learned that this man has a wife and a child, so the saga was ultimately tied off in a quaint, thoroughly unsatisfying bow. Except, it wasn’t.
Indeed, soon after Amelia went around with that piece of paper, the fire department caught wind of it and began printing her drawing on in-house merchandise for the department. It only got better by several orders of magnitude when Amelia found out that the firefighter’s entire family (wife, child, grandparents, and all) all got custom-made t-shirts with her drawing on it, and the laughter from absolutely every party involved is nothing short of infectious.
This is precisely what the best version of the internet looks like; wholesome, tongue-in-cheek bulls*** brought forth by walking, talking green flags. Amelia’s story is just an infinitesimally tiny sample of the world wide web; according to Health IT, the data present on the internet clocked in at 64 zetabytes (or roughly 64 trillion gigabytes) as of 2020. It’s expected to increase to 175 zetabytes by 2025, and it’s probably no coincidence that that’s the year we’re expecting Grand Theft Auto VI to hit shelves. But size benefits nobody if it’s not an irrepressible force for good, and Amelia’s romantic stick-man mishap is an adorable, explosively hilarious, and surprisingly colossal boon for the human spirit.
