The end of the Internet

Do you remember that AOL commercial from a while back for  (what happened to all those free AOL CDs?  They were fun frisbees) where a guy was surfing the web, and he supposedly reaches the end of the Internet?   His wife shouts from the other room something along the lines of “are you surfing the web?” and he replies, “I was, but I finished it.” I couldn’t find it online anywhere, but you get the gist of it.

Though it would be impossible to “finish” the Internet in the same sense as one “finishes” a book, one man, Greg Rutter, has apparently attempted to write the Cliffs Notes version.  I recently stumbled upon this little gem (actually my dad emailed it to me), it’s called: “Greg Rutter's Definitive List of The 99 Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet Unless You're a Loser or Old or Something.”  The name is self-explanatory: it's 99 things on the Internet that all the cool kids are doing.

Check it out; it’s a really great list.  It mostly consists of funny videos (think Star Wars Kid, Chocolate Rain, etc), but has other stuff as well.  WARNING:  There are 4 links at the bottom that are rather X-rated (read: 2 girls 1 cup), but the rest are mostly silly YouTube videos (which still may not be safe for work, so beware).

It’s a pretty awesome list, and if you check it out, it's fun to count how many you've already seen (I was around 55/99).  The site is a great way to distract yourself and catch up on the viral videos you may have missed.  But after spending a good 5 hours clicking from link to link (and related links) and then attempting to stand, my legs' inability to function got me thinking...

Take a second and think, actually think about how much time you spend on your computer each day.  It’s crazy.  Perhaps I’m an outlier, but I’m about as attached to my laptop as I was to watching Are You Afraid of the Dark everyday when I was a kid (no better time to watch a scary show than 4:30pm, IMO).   I know, I know, the statement “Facebook is ruining our ability to communicate in person" has been said again and again, but really, Facebook IS ruining our ability communicate in person.

I actually don't have too big of qualms with Facebook (it does help people stay in touch), though I do think Facebook has affected our ability to actually speak with others in real life.  It's really just our general abuse of the Internet that worries me.  It's just too darn easy to get lost in the Internet and completely avoid actually interacting with other human beings; why push myself and acutally engage in social interaction when I can  just as easily waste away and watch an entire season of 24 at the push of a button?  In a recent study I did (by asking myself and my Mom), surfing the web with no real purpose was found to be the #3 leading cause of lost friendship (#1 was a friend suddenly liking Linkin’ Park, and #2 was  catching an acquaintance examining a snooty Kleenex too long).

When does aimlessly surfing the web go from ‘relaxing escape’ to ‘reality-numbing-brain-frying-life-sapping menace?  I'm not 100 percent sure of the time and date, but I think it's a Thursday.

I actually don’t fault the videos found in the list above.  Viral videos and the like  don’t contribute much to our slow transformation into half-human half-computer cyborgs (the real cause, as everyone knows, is rogue Sky-Net technology from the Terminator movies), they tend to be too short, too hilarious, and generally too harmless for me to be mad at.  But I do think we need to re-examine our Twitter/Facebook/Side-Reel/Warcraft/Perez Hilton/Hulu/Addicting Games/Second Life/ESPN.com/MySpace/Megavideo/IGN/Minesweeper infected lives.