this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
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If it makes you feel any better, you can rest assured that Capitol Hill doesn't know how the Internet works either.
" And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material." - Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens
I mean as far as metaphors go, it's really not that bad. It's visual and immediately understandable, and at least connected to the underlying thing it's describing (network traffic really does flow down a series of wries/cables that are functionally "tubes" of electrons or photons). Hell, people have been likening an internet connection to a "pipe" since at least the 90s (it was already a thing when I first got internet access in '95).
Sure the guy who said it was a dickbag, but I can think of a dozen worse analogies offhand.
To be fair, at this late date, the tubes analogy isn't that bad. I forget what point he was trying to make though.
He wasn't necessarily wrong, he was just an asshole. The context for the meme was a speech he gave in vehement opposition to a proposed bill amendment which would have codified net neutrality principles into law. The concept he was blundering through explaining was basically just an eli5 version of limited bandwidth. I send this message (or, in his parlance, this internet) from my phone to Lemmy. It travels through a series of tubes to get there. If the tubes are clogged with traffic, my message might have to get in line. And that's not fair to people who have the money to not be treated like a poor.
Fun fact, Senator Stevens was the longest serving senator to lose a bid for reelection, largely due the fact that he was embroiled in a big corruption scandal at the time. The conviction ended up being vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct though, and I didn't care to dive any deeper, but I'm inclined to believe he was a grifter. Rest in piss.
I think he was trying to download something, it was taking time, and he thought the requested files are all in order in "the tubes". He had to wait for the other files to be delivered before his arrived.
...or something.