"Welcome to the internet, weary traveler. So great of you you to join us. You'll have to forgive me being a little rusty, but I didn't think there were any of you left out there. Come on in, have a seat. This may be overwhelming.

clears throat

Back in the 1980s, government officials around the U.S. were looking for a way to share important information, documents, launch codes, and pirated episodes of The West Wing. Hence, the 'world wide web' was born.

Lol don't be alarmed. You're not caught up in some kind of literal spiderweb, waiting to be eaten. Why heck no! By golly, you are now part of a wide-ranging group of interconnected, 'networked' computers, commonly referred to as 'the internet', not to be confused with the film 'The Net' starring Bullock. To this day, there is still no concrete explanation for that film's existence.

Let's not get off track. Here comes the most important part. By the 2010s, what was once a beacon of light and understanding became a dumping ground for the collective consciousness of all of its users. The 'internet' lost its initial novelty after the fall of MySpace, devastating the intellectual elite that once resided in it's great halls of wisdom. It was at this point that everybody with even a hint of purpose in their lives abandoned the 'web' for greener pastures.

This mass exodus resulted in an information vacuum the likes of which the world had never seen. Almost overnight, the 'web' became inundated with pointless information, low resolution images, and the dreadful musings of failed artists from every corner of the globe.

This is now what is commonly referred to as "shitposting" and has become the cornerstone of all internet activity outside of social networking.

Now the world was faced with a problem. Internet 'landfills' were overflowing with these 'shitposts', clogging the flow of information and metaphorically 'stinking up' the revered halls of information sharing that the 'internet' was once known for. Tech leaders everywhere put their heads together and came up with a brilliant solution, a homeland for all of the 'shitposters' around the world.

This was a great idea that many praised, but it needed a name, a name that truly stood for what this place was all about. In a beta version of this new dumping ground, one of the founders came upon a piece of information that he had already seen before. How was that possible?

In only five minutes after this new land was born, beta testers had stopped posting original content ("O.C.") and had begun reposting popular pieces of information that they had seen other beta-testers post, often taking credit for it's 'originality' even though they were all working on the same bank of 13 computer terminals.

At the end of the first day, one beta-tester cried out, "What is the point of unlimited access to information if I have already read it?"

History would not remember this man, as he was promptly fired without severance, but the name stuck and a phenomena was born.

Welcome to Reddit."