I was thinking about the internet-famous bit of Louis C.K.'s, usually known as "Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy," while I was in the airport the other day. The clinching example of the bit is a story he tells about being on a flight that announced they had wireless internet access, and the internet subsequently crashing beyond immediate repair. His seat-mate, who is unhappy with this turn of events, is the avatar for people who just can't be happy about the amazing world we live in:
Except that C.K. has missed the relevance of the story, and he's wrong. Unless the airline had somehow not realized they could make money from selling internet access, his seat-mate probably paid for the ability to use the internet. His complaint was not born out of an unjustified sense of entitlement to a technology he'd not been aware of, but out of the common enough experience (especially when plane travel is involved) of having paid for something that turns out to be not exactly what was promised.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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