Is the internet making us weirder?

Dennis used to brew his own beer--sort of turned himself into kind of a beer snob, IMO. Which, no doubt, is what prompted my co-worker to email me an article about the world's strongest, most expensive, and probably most oddly-packaged beer. A somewhat more SFW edition is here, although it omits the part about the "koozies" being (humanely?) sourced from roadkill.

I passed the original link on to Dennis thinking that our species is becoming weirder by the nanosecond. Then I thought better of that sentiment. Rather, I think that the perception of weirdness is like the perception of violent crime, at least in one respect. Gallup and other organizations have noted that violent crime has dropped off since the early 1990s, but the zeitgeist has yet to catch up with reality . Largely thanks to the internet, crime reporting is padding for the 24 hour news cycle. For instance, child abductions are tweeted in real-time, rather than having to wait for their turn on a new print run of milk cartons. Similarly, weird doesn't have to wait for word of mouth or write-ups in irregularly-published fanzines.

But there ends the similarity. While the inflated perception of crime doesn't equate to a heightened endorsement of it, propagating the weird via the internet probably makes that little (or large) slice of whimsical weirdness that lurks in many of us feel less alone. That, to my mind, is an excellent thing. And although the decadence of a 110-proof critter-encased brew is solely the perogative of the rich, weird comes in all price ranges, even free. And, mostly thanks to the internet, much of it is open source to boot.