YNOT – Ron Jeremy, arguably the most recognizable man in porn and an outspoken advocate of technologies that help parents protect children from cyber-smut, admitted in no uncertain terms that he hates the internet — primarily, he said, because the web allows lazy bums to profit from other people’s hard work.“The internet has allowed a lot of crooks, thieves and squatters to become millionaires,” he told BBC blogger Maggie Shiels during the Consumer Electronics Show. “Normally, they wouldn’t get a job washing dishes.

“People can download stuff for free these days, so why the heck are they going to buy it?” he continued. “The only ones making money out of porn are the novelty companies. I just hate the internet in general.”

Of course, Jeremy also admitted he considers himself a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to technology.

“Like most people, I can’t live without a cell phone, but I just have this flip one,” he told Shiels. “There’s nothing ‘smart’ about it. I’m a very strange case. I fax back and forth and am not big on e-mail.

“I’m like a throwback to the old days. I’m old school,” he said.

But that doesn’t mean he’s willing to give technology a pass when he sees critique-worthy ramifications. Rampant thievery and piracy aren’t the only reasons Jeremy finds cyberspace distasteful. He called the web “sort of evil” because he believes it is having a negative impact on the collective intelligence of humanity and individuals’ ability to think for themselves.

“I am a former school teacher, I have a masters degree and two [bachelors degrees], and I think the internet is making people stupid,” he told Shiels.

“[The web is] good because you can research any topic. In my day, we went to the encyclopedia for that. Nowadays, though, kids can’t memorize anything. No dates, no times tables, no history. If there is anything you need to know, you just press a few buttons. We could be giving rise to a generation of idiots.”