By: Reach For The Sky
It's 1 a.m. You're three sentences into your minimum five-page research paper. Which is due in nine hours. Why then, are you reading the Wikipedia page detailing the exploits of MacGyver? You don't know. You could have sworn you were reading Charlotte Brontë's page, scouring for sources a second ago. It's the strange phenomenon known as the Wikipedia effect. When reading any wikipedia page, there are links, colored blue for ease of identification. When one of these catches your attention (and at least one will, most likely when you are on a time crunch) you will click it on instinct. Another Wikipedia page, with it's own set of links is presented. Soon you're going through episode guides to "Chuck", learning the finer ideas of Scientology, or reading the biography of a DC super hero. It's the most fatal distraction ever, and it's everywhere.
YouTube, 8:00 p.m. You're killing time by watching a friend's skating video. What's that in Related Videos? Extreme pogosticking? You have to see this. Then pogo trick fail. then trampoline fail. this will go on until it's 4 in the morning, you leave for work in 3 hours.
It seems that the internet is designed to keep you intertwined for hours on end. Tags, links, recommended items, all set in place to draw your attention and hold it until exhaustion outweighs interest. If there was a way to apply this to modern advertising, someone would make billions. This person would be considered pure evil, so you take the bad with the good.
Sorry for the inane post. Sleep deprivation can do that to you. By the way, if you liked this post, you'll love this update.
Rose's Note: Sometimes this sleep depravation spills over. I.E. Reach sending me millions of links, and me not being able to avoid clicking them, but it's made for some of the biggest laughs I've ever had.
Do your parents know you are staying up this late on your computer every night?
ReplyDeleteWell, technically it's not every night. Since me and Reach take turns posting neither one of us is more than 3 times a week, and one or two of those nights is always on a weekend.
ReplyDeleteHonestly the only reason we wait so late in the evening to post is because of all of the other work we have to get done before we even have time to think about what our post should be about :/
lololololololololololololol
ReplyDeletethat happens to me so much. its either that or i end up playing games