So you know what? I'm gonna take a page from Dante's book, in a manner of speaking. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:
The Sarcastic Soul's Inferno(*).
For those of you who are unaware or unfamiliar with the original piece of literature, Dante's Inferno was divided into nine individual circles of hell. The deeper into hell you got, the more heinous the sin committed, and the more severe the punishment. Dante assigned each type of sinner their own unique punishment which served as an ironic poetic justice, depending on what type of sin they were being punished for. So here's my spin on it.
* Disclaimer: The following blog post is a humorous satire. It does not in any way reflect the author's religious views, political views, or any feeling toward other human beings which is to be taken seriously. It merely reflects an unhealthy amount of sarcasm, a remedial knowledge of 14th century epic poetry, and a crude attempt at humor. Send all hate-mail courtesy of The Sarcastic Soul at ssoul.dmsdiscretion@gmail.com, or your nearest trash can.
Circle One -Limbo
In Dante's version, Limbo was reserved for the virtuous pagans, or those who were never taught the ways of Christ, but lived goodly, virtuous lives. Their punishment was eternal life devoid of the presence of God. In MY Inferno, however, Limbo is reserved for the Unfortunately Unintelligent. These people aren't necessarily guilty of any sin or crime, they were just born a few eggs short of a dozen. Without access to the guiding light of intellectualism, they stumble through life oblivious to their follies, or the fact that the vast majority of the time, they're being really, really annoying. The punishment originally assigned to this circle by Dante wasn't really a punishment, but in my Limbo it may very well be. The Limbo occupants must spend eternity in a library. An actual, educational, well-stocked library. Without a children's book section. Or computers with crappy games from the 90's on them. Not even Minesweeper.
Circle Two - YouTube Commenters
We all knew these guys were going to make it into this list, but it's a shock even to me that they're only in the second circle. However, after weighing the options in the list I planned to use, they just fit here best. Also, because the circles of hell decrease in size as they descend deeper, if I'd planted these idiots any further down they'd probably have ruptured their circle with overcrowding. The sin they committed will become blindingly obvious if you check the comment section of almost any video on the entire website. There are many, many subdivisions of this category, many of which landed themselves in deeper circles, but almost nothing positive or constructive is accomplished in YouTube comments. If you took a hundred thousand people, blindfolded all of them and gave each one a hockey stick and a megaphone, then penned them all up in an open room and told them the last man standing got his opinion plated in gold and stamped onto Mount Rushmore's Washington head, that would be the most accurate physical representation I can think of for YouTube comment boxes.
The Punishment: They're forced to spend the rest of eternity trapped in a small, dark room while the sounds of every single stupid, pointless argument ever had is blasted at them at an unbearable volume. And they're able to understand every single word of it.
Circle Three - Hipsters
I respect originality. I really do. In fact, I pride myself on it and have a habit of holding others to the same standard. I also understand the frustration of people assuming you're only doing something because everyone else is doing it. But when you've reached the point where you're doing, saying, using and consuming things for the sole purpose of being able to say it's not "mainstream," you've gone too far. When you're lurking around Hastings, wearing a shirt with a v-neck so low a prostitute wouldn't wear it, rambling about obscure indie band lyrics on your MySpace while you murder your liver and taste buds with Pabst Blue Ribbon, there is absolutely no way in any hell that you are enjoying your life. You are absolutely wasting every minute of every day trying to convince the world that you've transcended their "mainstream" or whatever instead of just enjoying life. And you can go ahead and claim that you don't care what people think, but if that was any kind of true you WOULDN'T BE A HIPSTER.
The Punishment: They're forced to spend eternity living among every other former hipster, wearing the exact same gray jumpsuit, eating the exact same foods, and robbed of any kind of originality. Meanwhile, a crappy tabloid news station plays over and over on a monstrous flat screen to report what's "popular" and "in" in the mainstream. And they're forced to emulate whatever that behavior is. Forever.
Circle Four - Stupid Drivers
You know when you're driving down the freeway, and some guy in a shiny new muscle car or a gigantic fume-spewing truck jacked up on ridiculous wheels rockets past you? And you watch them go past, look at your own speedometer and and realize they're easily doing over 90 in a 65 mph zone? And you watch them fly down the road, dodging and weaving and darting between other vehicles, scaring the piss out of the drivers and acting like morons? Well, what about those people who just cannot drive to save their lives, but insist they're the best drivers ever and continue to put the lives of themselves and everyone else on the road at risk? Well, let me tell you where those people end up, in case you didn't know. You know those massive 5+ car pileups, vehicle bonfires or dramatic rollovers that back up traffic for three cities and tack an extra three hours onto your trip? Guess who's responsible for that garbage the vast majority of the time? You guessed it. The speeders, drunks and flat out terrible drivers. God never intended these people to get behind the wheel of any vehicle that wasn't a matchbox car, and they've defied His will. Now you're stuck on the interstate, moving at the speed of parking lot while they call in the jaws of life to pry open the wreckage of that pretty blue mustang. And y'know, just a hunch, but they probably aren't just looking to see if her phone managed to send that really important text message to her boyfriend.
The Punishment: These people are forced to drive an endless loop in a junky, ancient vehicle without air conditioning, radio or functioning dials, in an endless traffic jam under fiery heat. To make things more fitting, they also have to pee like it's no tomorrow. They can wet themselves all they want, but it'll never bring any relief. If they try to leave their cars, some of hell's nastier residents are waiting to skewer them with spears and plant them right back into their respective vehicles.
Circle Five - "Gangstas"
When I say gangstas here, I'm covering a very wide array of people which includes both the serious gang members who shoot each other and act like morons, as well as the people who wish they were serious gang members who shoot each other and act like even bigger morons. The people I'm primarily referring to here, however, are the people who dress as if they checked their clothes in a fun-house mirror, speak as if they have zero understanding of how English (or language in general) works, and walk everywhere as if one leg were shorter than the other. These people have probably never owned or even fired a gun of any kind, listen to rap with lyrics that are 80% cursing and 20% abusing women, and wear backpacks that have Cookie Monster and Elmo on them. Because y'know. That's gangsta. They also seem to have mistaken those elastic book covers for headgear.
The Punishment: These special people are forced dress like Steve Urkel for eternity. Also, because of their affinity for backpacks and other clothing items intended for elementary school students, they're forced to listen to tracks from Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers and Barney, as well as the most irritating bubblegum J-pop music imaginable, on loop, forever.
Circle Six - Call of Duty Players
In all honesty, I probably could have just given this circle to "pretentious, elitist pricks" but Call of Duty players are the elite of the elitist, and the prickliest of the pricks. They operate every day under the assumption that their CoD scores, levels and records are their greatest achievements, that they are great and amazing people because they're good at CoD, and that all of us simpletons who don't play CoD are inferior as human beings in general because of it. There is no game, no activity and no achievement we can partake of or gain which can measure up to their amazingness, because it isn't CoD. These aggravating tryhards are the cream of the crop when it comes to people who give gaming, geeks and gamer society a terrible name.
The Punishment: The CoD players will be eternally trapped in a repeating warzone and given plastic toy weapons while they're hunted, fought and shot to pieces over and over again by unkillable denizens of hell armed with actual firearms and infinite ammunition.
Circle Seven - Hackers
In Dante's original Inferno, the seventh circle, The Violent, was divided into three rings. Each descending ring was more severe than the last, and each had a unique punishment. Sticking with the original layout, I'll do the same with mine.
Outer Ring - Bot Programmers
These are the people who are responsible for you having to decipher a blotchy, cryptic string of nonsensical letters and numbers to inevitably fail to type in correctly when you're trying to sign up for or post anything. Those programs, called Recaptcha programs, are designed to prevent the programs designed by these idiots from making a bajillion accounts on sites like Hotmail, Facebook and Neopets for the sole purpose of spamming you and all of your friends with ads for Viagra, pyramid schemes and "natural male enhancement."
The Punishment: Forced to decipher an endless stream of Recaptcha codes, all of which are inevitably wrong every single time. For eternity.
Middle Ring - Identity Thieves
These lovely people use their gifted knowledge of technology and coding to hack into your email addresses, personal information and Facebook accounts to gain as much financial information about you as they can, and then proceed to impersonate you and use your credit card numbers, social security number and other information to spend all of your money and leave you more broke than a confetti egg in a blender. What's more is that they can be nearly impossible to catch once they have your things, so there's a really good chance you'll never have the satisfaction of seeing them caught while you spend the rest of your mortal life cleaning up their mess and giving the last rites to your mortally wounded credit score.
The Punishment: Dante already gives a punishment for thieves in which they're pursued and bitten by vicious lizards and snakes, which causes them to change, lose and trade shapes with the animals and each other. I've taken a different route with mine, however. Because the identity thieves are so obsessed with becoming other people, they're chained to walls while creatures with knives carve their faces off, and then replace them by stitching on someone else's. Which is then sliced off and replaced with another one. Ad infinitum.
Inner Ring - Malware/Virus Programmers
In life, these detriments to society write and program malicious software designed to attack and destroy other people's personal computers. The reasons behind this are their own, but I'd wager that most of the time it's just the giggles they get knowing that something they made is wrecking something that belongs to somebody else. Even if they can't see it. There is literally no good reason or purpose for this kind of thing, and it costs people between hundreds and thousands of dollars in repair costs.
The Punishment: Permanently attached to chairs and placed in front of computers where they're forced to create endless, pointless lines of code which are interrupted every so often by blue screens of death, at which point they're forced to start over in a Sisyphean struggle against the malicious fruits of their own labor. (Heh. Sisyphean. See what I did there? Classical references for everybody!)
Circle Eight - Trolls
Much like circle seven, Dante's original eighth circle was divided into 10 subsections called Bolgias, each pertaining to a different variant of the given sin. Again, I'm gonna stick to his blueprint and do the same with mine.
Bolgia 1 - Spammers: As old as the internet itself, these idiots spend all their time in cyberspace spewing forth useless gibberish for the rest of us to sort through to find actual content.
Punishment: Forced to constantly vomit a lovely potpourri of random things, just like they did with their comments.
Bolgia 2 - Ragers: Like all trolls, these people have nothing constructive to offer the world. Their sole purpose is to just rage and rant nonsense at everything. Mostly, they just do it to piss people off.
Punishment: Forced to spend eternity arguing. With an angry swarm of hornets.
Bolgia 3 - Chain Linkers: Exist to inform you that once upon a time there was a girl in a house who died and if you repost this retarded message twenty times in the next five minutes and say "Mecha-lecha-hi-mecha-hiney-ho" over and over the person you love's name will appear on the screen but if you don't the girl will kill you in three days for real this works my friend did it lolololol.
Punishment: Murdered repeatedly by a creepy little girl.
Bolgia 4 - Instigators: You know that guy who started the massive flamewar over religion in the comments section under the Cat Stevens video when he called him a muslim terrorist from china? That guy.
Punishment: Murdered repeatedly by muslim terrorists from china who are also Cat Stevens fans.
Bolgia 5 - Trash Talkers: Exist to inform you of just how much you suck at everything you do, and how much better they are, and how this one time they did [x activity] 100 times better than you ever could with their eyes closed.
Punishment: Repeatedly forced to do everything they claimed to do, exactly as well as they claimed to do it, with impossible-to-achieve expectations. Beaten furiously when they fail.
Bolgia 6 - Gaydars: Unbelievably adept at detecting things which are homosexual, referring to everything and everyone as "gay" or "fag."
Punishment: Eternally tormented, put down and hated on by extremely flamboyant homosexual demons.
Bolgia 7 - Thirteen-year-olds with gaming headsets: ...Thirteen-year-olds with gaming headsets.
Punishment: Placed into overtight straight jackets, and have headphones welded to their heads so they can eternally listen to a chorus of ten to thirteen-year-olds scream at them and tell them what gay loser homofags they are.
Bolgia 8 - Mythbusters: Comment on every video, forum post or news story to inform the world of just how incredibly fake it is, for X list of reasons, and more for the sole purpose of seeming smarter than they are.
Punishment: Spend eternity reliving every role in every experiment played by Buster the crash dummy from the Mythbusters show.
Bolgia 9 - Beggars: Every time they comment, it contains the words "like this if," "thumbs up if," or "+1 this if."
Punishment: Branded, instantly healed and branded again and again with thumbs-down, dislike, -1 and flag-for-spam images.
Bolgia 10 - Sympathy Seekers: Constantly sell sob stories about how they broke up with their significant other or their mom died or their [X important person] was [Y tragic outcome] because/by [Z tragic occurrence]. It's 100% BS, but they feel the need to share it with everyone in Life Issues threads, Off-Topic threads, and the comment sections of love songs.
Punishment: Forced to watch [X important person] be [Y tragic outcome] by [Z traumatically tragic occurrence] over and over.
Circle 9 - The Space Cadets
For a final time, in the original Inferno, Dante divides the ninth circle of hell (which is frozen, by the way) into 4 sections called Rounds. I'll do the same. These are the Space Cadets, or the people who are so far gone to the world that they have completely lost contact with reality and replaced it with their own twisted, stupid versions. Which they proceed to inflict upon everyone else.
Round 1 - Japanophiles: I cannot express with words how much these people irritate me. Even in college, they exist. They walk around with Naruto headbands they bought at Hot Topic, fox tails tied to their pants, etc. I think I've ranted about these idiots in enough posts already that you get the basic idea. You know how I feel about them.
The Punishment: Forced to commit Hara-Kiri over and over and over again. With a blade as dull as a butter knife.
Round 2 - Twilight Fanatics: You'd think that by now, this crap would have died off. But no. I blame all of these people for ruining the image of one of my favorite fantasy creatures.
The Punishment: Spend eternity fleeing from and being subsequently caught, attacked and killed over and over by REAL vampires. Y'know, the kind that don't sparkle or fall in love with unattractive girls with the personalities of bricks.
Round 3 - Tabloid News Reporters/Magazine Writers: Believe it or not, I know very, VERY few people who care to know who was best dressed or worst dressed at whatever event, or who cheated on whom, or what he said she said or whatever. And yet, these people continue to fill our lives with pointless drivel nobody important cares about.
The Punishment: Forced to report actual news. You know, the important, boring things that don't involve celebrities or scandal. Gasp.
Round 4 - The Entire Cast of The Jersey Shore: I am thoroughly convinced that somehow, in some way, this show is the root of all evil. Why else would a show about a bunch of brainless spray-tanned douchenozzles still be on the air with a nauseating number of faithful viewers? They alone can probably account for most if not all of the sins listed in Dante's original inferno. So what do we do? Televise them so they can be idolized and copied... Yay, society...
The Punishment: Forced to eternally lead unpaid, unrewarded, sub-average lives accomplishing nothing as productive, hard-working members of a society that cares nothing about them and doesn't give a rat's ass who they are, what they call themselves, or what they put in their hair.
So there you have it, folks. The Sarcastic Soul's Inferno, the not-so-spiritual non-successor to a 14th century epic poem by an angry Italian. As written by a 21st century angry American. You know where to send the hate-mail, and I look forward to your letters.
-The Sarcastic Soul-
You need to watch God Bless America.
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