The Internet, once denigrated by a U.S. senator as “a series of tubes,” has now been victimized by pop star Prince, who declared the Web “dead” in an interview with a British newspaper.
“The Internet’s completely over,” Prince told the Daily Mirror. “I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else … all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”
To boost his luddite bona fides, the artist presently known as Prince — once known as “the artist formerly known as Prince” — will not make his upcoming album available through iTunes or any other Internet venue. Rather, it will initially be released for free in this Saturday’s edition of the Daily Mirror and similarly distributed through other European publications.
“The internet’s like MTV,” Prince said in the interview, which we were able to access via the dead Internet. “At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated.”
The reaction from within the tubes of the Internet was predictably snarky.
The British music blog theCMUwebsite.com wrote: “With the internet now over … we’re now developing a new incarnation of CMU where members of our team will come to your office and tell you all the latest news.”
On Twitter, Los Angeles-based author and screenwriter Caprice Crane —
— wrote: “Prince has declared, ‘The Internet is dead.’ This tweet is a ghooooost. Boo!”
Patrick May of Toronto, under the Twitter name
, wrote: “Spoiler Alert: the internet was dead the whole time!”
Hell hath no fury like an Internet scorned.
