Yesterday I found myself explaining a curious thing to my son. He was wondering why H.P. Lovecraft wasn’t the most famous horror-writer ever, and I explained that he was a little too “out there” to ever garner a larger readership, until recently (admittedly, I suspect his readership is still not huge, but it’s growing). My son asked me why more people were reading him now. And so I told the tale of How Geeks Took Over The World.

Long ago, I told my son, when I was growing up, Geeks were forced to desperately cling to the lowest rung of the social strata.  “Really?” my son asked, horror showing plainly on his face.   Yes my love, I told him, it was a very hard time to be a Geek.  And I reminded him of several nightmarish episodes from my youth.  I then proceeded to explain to him how we took over.  How, with the advent of the Internet and computer games, suddenly we were the ones holding the keys to the kingdom.  You see, I continued, no one but the Geeks had ever bothered to learn how to write computer programs or play with hardware.  And so they found themselves coming to Us.

After that, I went on, it wasn’t long before it was “cool” to be a Geek.  And then the ex-jocks and cheerleaders and prom queens and kings and all their minions traded in their jerseys for some plaid, button-up shirts and Chucks and started talking about sci-fi and roleplaying games and comic books and physics.  And some of them even started reading H.P. Lovecraft.

My little son’s faced glowed as he gazed adoringly upon the mother who had fought so hard to bring the world to what it is today (or at least, I like to remember it that way).  But then his little brow crinkled, and he asked in a worried voice,” But Mommy, how do we tell the Real Geeks from the Fake Geeks, now?”

Simple, I replied.  Real Geeks would never use Internet Explorer.

And that, my dear readers, is what I have come to you to say today.  Please, please, for the love of all that is holy, do not use Internet Explorer.  It’s not cool.  The Real Geeks laugh at you behind your back for using it, when they are not cursing you for making their day jobs as programmers ten thousand times more difficult.

If browsers were cars, IE would be a moped.  If browsers were wine, IE would be Night Train.  If browsers were hot dates, IE has herpes.  If browsers were…well, you get the idea.

So there’s the tip of the day from one who knows.  If you want to be one of the “in-crowd”, ditch that lousy-ass browser.  You’ll be glad you did, and so will we.