A man living in upstate New York recently learned that if he wanted broadband internet access in his home, he'd have to pay for installation fees totaling $20,000. Even worse: his only option is fucking Time Warner.

Doot-doot! The internet's spookiest meme isn't really spooky at all. Start the video, and a disembodied skull holding a trumpet appears, hovering over a field of black. Without menace, it turns toward you, and the bell of its horn begins to throb. Doot-doot! Skull Trumpet's musical salvo lasts all of two notes, and it's over.

Next year, at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania, a group of students will screw around online. Between lectures on thinkers like John Cage and Betty Friedan, they'll be asked to browse the likes of Tumblr or Twitter and hopefully, by they end of the semester, they'll have something meaningful to say about it all.

Today, the internet has ascribed an inspiring bit of heroism to Paul Rudd, after video surfaced this weekend of a man who almost, kind of looks like Paul Rudd helping to prevent an alleged hate crime at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport (as shown in the video above). Alas, @TheRealPaulRudd was actually thousands of miles away, likely doing nothing, while real American heroes got their hands dirty.

Chances are, you've never accidentally scrolled past child porn on your Facebook or Twitter feed, or cued up an innocuous-looking YouTube video only to find a clip of a beheading. For that, you have tens of thousands of poorly-paid contract workers to thank.

Currently, Ebola.com is pretty barebones: an image of the virus, a few news articles, and links to buy relevant books on Amazon. If you think you can do something better with the site, it can be yours for just $150,000. But if birdflu.com better suits your fancy, you'll have to pay Jon Schultz a little more.

Role-playing, on some level, is about escapism. Ordinary life is boring; Dungeons and Dragons lets you get away. Have some fun! Be a wizard, a knight, an intergalatic mercenary. Or, in the case of the 2,000-plus members of the "Generic Office Roleplay" Facebook group, an IT guy.

You might recall "Heartbleed," a password-thieving software bug that left hundreds of thousands of computers vulnerable while you pretended to understand and worry. Now we've got another source of esoteric computer dread, and it might be even worse.

As I sat, sweating, at a keyboardless iMac in a sweltering bar, an amplified voice announced the beginning of competition: "The previous rounds were based on a combination of luck and skill, but this one is really all about skill. Can you surf? Can you rip?"

There are people who want to look like Tumblr grew legs and walked out of ass-town. Look at this guy. Fuck this guy.

In order to prove once and for all that it is totally web-savvy, and not nearly as analog as the critics say—oh, and also to raise money—the Republican Party is selling new web domains ending in .gop starting today. They are much in demand, but not for the reasons Republicans might have hoped.

We’re 35 floors high above midtown Manhattan and Lee O’Denat occupies the seat across from me. His is a physically-commanding presence—a bull of a man—and I begin to think everything I have read about him up until this point is true. The designer shades. The diamond-encrusted chain. The deceptively knowing smile that spreads across his round face from time to time. He knows something that you don’t.

In an "opinion" column mostly devoid of opinions, Maureen Dowd seems to express some wistful hope for a future internet that forgets and buries all references to our past mistakes and transgressions. That's Maureen Dowd, admitted plagiarist.

Oh, those damned namby-pamby leftists with their weak-ass hashtag slacktivism. If only they knew that what really changes the world is dudes with guns. Thankfully, Marine Todd here will set them straight. With a hashtag sign. Get it? Har har!

It's the story of a man. A man who went to war. And then went to college. And then decked a godless shithead professor. It's a feel-good story! And it went viral among God-fearing Murkans. And then Twitter got hold of it. And then it got really good.

There's a grain of truth to this one. A very tiny, crumbly, solitary grain.

If you weren't wired thousands of dollars this weekend, it's probably because you didn't ask a Twitter teen who said he or she was giving away a fortune to whomever wanted it. Or, it's because everyone was faking it.

The internet was weird this week. Mostly in a good way. But also in a bullshitty way.

A judge banned a man from the internet for pulling a series of dangerous "pranks" on his neighbor, including posting a fake Craigslist ad that requested nude male suitors.

In which the paper of record links to the website Know Your Meme in an article about snowy owls. What a world!