We live in a world where there exists a service to anonymously deliver eggplants to people. We live in a world where there is a mod for Doom wherein all textures are replaced with a signed picture of Tim Allen.

We live in a world where there are edible fidget spinners made out of Oreo cookies. And we would not live in a world with these strange things—or at least be aware we live in a world with such strange things—without the Internet.

It is often lamented that the Internet, thought to be the tool of enlightenment of the 1990s to the present, is used to view pictures of cats and other strange things. But is that, perhaps, the beauty of it? Our species has created something so amazing that we have turned it into something mundane and silly, which I feel is, in itself, an accomplishment.

Without a doubt, there were strange things in the world before the Internet became mainstream. They were hiding in small villages and back alleys of the world’s great metropolises, known to only those who lived there. But now, a little oddity from, say, Cullman, Alabama can be known in New York, in London, in Shanghai, and in Rio de Janeiro with the simple click of a button.

What the Internet has done is compile the collected oddities of the human species and amplified them through wide exposure, forming common knowledge and experiences that people can then use for their odd purposes.

This is the origin of internet memes and of strange trends such as planking or the Harlem Shake (so they were when I was younger). I reckon it’s why my elders perceive that the youth is getting dumber— it isn’t, but it is getting more exposure to innovative methods of stupidity. Had they the access to the same in their youth, they would have turned out like we did.

Being exposed to the weirdness of others across the world amplifies the weirdness in oneself—that is how internet memes propagate and change. This allows for the most utterly bizarre things to come forth from the collective deranged artist that lives in the minds of every human being, giving birth to something that nobody could ever have expected.

And that is why, in its own perverse way, the internet is beautiful.