Science & Tech Quote by Mark E. Smith

Mark E. Smith turns a tech-bro putdown into regional class war, then wins it with a punchline that’s also a worldview. The setup is familiar: someone “explains” the Internet to him, dressing condescension up as sociology - you’re from the “bleak industrial wastes,” therefore you’re behind. Smith doesn’t argue the facts so much as he shivs the premise. The phrase “or something” is doing heavy lifting: it mocks the speaker’s lazy mythology of the North as a cultural backwater and exposes how often “you don’t understand” really means “you’re not my kind of modern.”

Then comes the counter-myth, delivered with deadpan swagger: “Fall fans invented the Internet.” It’s obviously false, which is the point. Smith is claiming ownership over the idea of online life as a subculture machine - a place for obsessive, argumentative, hyper-literate communities that existed long before Silicon Valley tried to brand that behavior as “disruption.” By dating it to 1982, he’s not offering a timeline; he’s flexing a sensibility: the wired, info-hungry, DIY network of post-industrial Britain was already trading tapes, gossip, and manifestos in whatever channels were available. Forums before forums.

The subtext is defensive and triumphant at once. Smith refuses the sentimental story that progress only flows outward from glossy centers. The North isn’t a lagging indicator; it’s an engine room. He’s protecting the dignity of a scene - and ridiculing the idea that culture needs permission from technology to be “modern.”