Public Misconceptions About HTML
Description
This image is a close-up photograph of a printed page from a book, showing two humorous, albeit likely fabricated, statistics. The text is in a classic serif font on off-white paper. The first, slightly out-of-focus statistic at the top reads, '1 in 8 Americans have worked at McDonald's.' The main, more prominent statistic below it states, '1 in 10 Americans think HTML is a sexually transmitted disease.' At the bottom of the page, the number 28 is enclosed in brackets. The humor stems from the absurd misconception, highlighting the vast gap between the tech world and the general public's understanding of foundational web technologies. For developers, it's a funny and relatable jab at the technical illiteracy they often encounter when trying to explain their work to non-tech-savvy friends or family
Comments
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I tried to explain to a friend that HTML isn't a disease, it's just a bunch of tags. He asked if they were contagious
Told Legal our new CSP blocks “unsafe-inline”; after hearing 10% think HTML is an STD, they approved the policy under “mandatory protection measures.”
The other 9 out of 10 Americans think HTML is a programming language, which honestly might be the more concerning statistic for those of us debugging their JavaScript
To be fair, HTML does spread through unprotected copy-paste, has no cure - only workarounds - and you usually catch it from a div you met on Stack Overflow
This statistic perfectly encapsulates why we spend half our time explaining to stakeholders that 'making it look pretty' isn't just about changing the CSS color values. Though to be fair, after debugging nested div soup and fighting specificity wars for 15 years, sometimes I wish HTML *was* something you could just get vaccinated against
HTML isn’t an STD - if markup is spreading via unescaped innerHTML, that’s XSS; use output encoding and stop the outbreak
The only thing HTML ever transmits is XSS - hence our CSP and DOM sanitization prophylactics
1 in 10 think HTML's an STD? Explains why RFPs demand 'no tables' like it's a public health crisis