Whilst sifting through some of the cosmic debris posted on one of our clients' messageboards, I was reminded that the old way of community building on the web has been jerknifed by a cuckoo convergence of spammers and advertisers, all of whom are smarter than the average bear and uglier by far.

The silicone-enabled funk that's stinkin' up the place is being force-fisted into your happy little "net-hood" by unlovable machines doing the will of evil nerds, leaving one to believe that we humans have finally fallen face first into the dirt that delivered us. Each time we come up with a new way to combat this nonsense, the other side becomes smarter and more difficult to repell. There are more than enough geniuses, who instead of using their fecal brain matter for ceasing global warming or researching a cure for HIV, are holing themselves up in subterranean lairs and perfecting methods to push the garbage we never want directly in front of our orbish head googlers.

The messageboard as a "community-building" tool has finally been retired, becoming the hapless dodo of the net. Messageboards were once glowing condos of conversation everyone wanted access to, organized into delicious little morsels of chatter. Now, despite a number of computer filtering systems pre-installed into your favorite messageboard application, ads for viagara and vicodin are showing up and enraging communities "” causing a mass exodus from the comfy groups they've constructed with their idle yippity yap, and leaving them as soulless advertising wastelands.

The real problem is not in the means of pushing Scheiße at us "” it's that members of the advertising community have foolishly come to believe that these guerilla tactics actually work. By cramming ads for stuff we don't want down our throats or planting spies to tout the latest software or wonder drug in our community boards, they think we'll actually knock each other down to read them quicker than a Tickle Me Elmo sale in the 90's. As far as I can personally see, we don't. But according to the IAB, there are a lot more advertisement-lovin' monkeys out there than smart ones. Quarterly online ad revenues are close to 4 Billion. While a large amount of this revenue is undoubtedly from the advertising banner systems that surround our content, I can't help but believe that somebody has to also be paying a merciless group of evil coders to stuff messageboards with crap at the same time.

So where do we go from here? Bloggers have created close-knit and personal communities of fans and foes with much better spam blocking software under their hoods. Perhaps, in due time, all of the web will be a big advertisers wonderland, supported by television programming and controlled by Net Neutrality laws. Someday, communities may actually return to the outdoors, causing a resurgence of parkside beatings rather than the safe, yet calculated verbal assaults occurring online daily. My fear is that the next generation may actually turn it's back on this wonderful medium that we've collectively made billions of dollars designing for. It's not too far from the truth right now. I hear paintball is making a comeback.

All I'm asking for is a little more honesty in the neighborhood, and I'll consider moving back into a supportive, online town where I belong. Until then, I'm off to Central Park to clobber the nerds who inspired me to write this drivel in the first place.

Dave Fletcher is a Founder and Creative Director of theMechanism, a maxi-media firm in New York City and London. While he lives most of his days in the non-virtual world, he promises that if you look close enough, there is meaning to his otherwise interpreted madness.