Slick messages in the extreme

Lane Filler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.

I miss the maniacal, poorly printed manifesto.

Remember, years ago, when you'd saunter out of the mall to find a pamphlet on your Chevette's windshield, or have it handed to you by a gap-toothed man whose face gleamed with madness and tobacco juice.

The screed would read something like: "REPENT!!!! THE END IS NEER!!! SATAN AND LIBERALS IS BEHIND THE FLOORIDE IN WATER, THE FEDDERAL RESERVE AND THE PESTILENTS OF TELEVISION, PARTIKULARLY THREES' COMPANIE!!! GOD WRITES THRU ME!!!!!!"

And you'd toss it, thinking, "While he makes a valid point about 'Three's Company,' I feel sure God does not write through him. God is a superb speller, and would not use exclamation points with such reckless abandon."

You could tell who was bonkers before you evaluated the content of their message, because they looked frantic, smelled like feta that had been left in the sun, and couldn't afford decent mimeographs. These indicators warned us to take those folks with a grain of salt, so that even if we were not entirely content with the world, we didn't fall into the trap of believing the real problem was communist control of international saffron prices or Walter Mondale's hidden Illuminati membership.

But now the barely legible flier, and even the street corner sermon delivered via a vintage Mister Microphone, have been replaced by the Internet.

And it is very hard to tell the scrambled from the sane on the World Wide Web.

There is no way to conclude, just by looking at most sites, whether the people behind them are mad or mindful. Some of the tiniest and most twisted groups on Earth have gorgeous, fast-functioning pages that link to and quote dozens of "authorities," format their stories professionally and feature flawless spelling, grammar and punctuation, which is often more than daily newspapers can claim.

The Ku Klux Klan has a great site. The American Nazi Party has a great site. Truthers, birthers and conspiratorial clowns of every stripe are very good with computers, or else at hiring folks who are.

Even the Westboro Baptist Church, famed for picketing the funerals of servicemembers to spread the message that God is killing our soldiers because of tolerance for gay people, has a nifty Web presence.

It's not a great site in the sense that, say, it explains why God would kill our military personnel to make a point about gay people, but it is sleek, well-designed and easy to navigate.

And while the Westboro site address goes far toward helping the discerning consumer realize its sponsors and contributors are consummate whackdoodles, that often isn't the case. Many of the most deranged pages on the Internet have nondescript addresses and main pages.

So we are forced to evaluate the content itself, and that gets harder and harder as the actual world gets weirder and weirder. What's more difficult to believe, that Charlie Sheen is still holding down a full-time job, that there is a rich, famous person called Lady GaGa who travels in an egg or that our government conspires against us?

So how can you tell when such well-designed sites are spewing nonsense? It's a good start to understand that:

Bad things that happen are not the fault of "them.''

God doesn't hate anyone.

The world is largely as it appears, the problems are as they seem and the resolutions do not materialize simply because they are difficult to achieve.

Nothing is a conspiracy, except perhaps, THE PESTILENTS OF TELEVISION, PARTIKULARLY THREES' COMPANIE!!! That does keep me up at night.