The 4 Worst Times to Be on The Internet
I probably spend too much time on the Internet. It's not a problem or anything. I can stop any time I want, I just won't today, and probably not tomorrow, either. But I'm fine.
Whether or not this is an addiction (it is!), is irrelevant. The point is, I've spent so much time on the Internet that I can now recognize the worst times of the year to be on it (you probably can too, because it's the day after Thanksgiving, and you're here, reading this silly column). I dread these days all year and complain about them to anyone who will listen. Because what's the alternative? Not going on the Internet? Shut up.
#4. Thanksgiving Day/Christmas
The Reason:
No one is talking about anything.
The holidays are amazing. Everyone gets to spend time with their family, gathered around a turkey or Christmas tree or Hanukkah Squid (right?), sharing a meal, and stories and laughter and love.
"Kiiiill meeeeee."
No one's working or running around; everyone's just peacefully enjoying time with their families.
And that's great, but what about the socially maladjusted folks, for whom the Internet has become surrogate family? What are we to do?
The problem, since everyone is out enjoying a rare day off, is that no one is doing anything. There are blogs I check, comics and shows I follow, but everyone's taking their rightful vacation. All of the socially-important news sites that I claim to visit, and all of the pop culture and entertainment news sites that I actually visit usually have some kind of cheerful "No updates today -- enjoy the holiday weekend!" message, so I'm forced to go a day without knowing anything.
Sure, Cracked.com updates with a few new pieces of content, but I've probably already read those before they even get published. Even most forums are full of people talking about how no one's around. For someone like me who works on the Internet professionally and spends time on the Internet degeneratively, it's like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Some sites are on vacation, some are lazy and some just acknowledge that, since it's going to be a slow traffic day anyway, they might as well not waste time writing up something new. Hell, even I'm slacking. This article was supposed to be five entries long, but, you know ... Thanksgiving stuff came up. This entry barely has an ending.
#3. World Cup/Release of New Video Game
The Reason:
Everyone is talking about one thing, but you hate it.
Or if you don't hate it, you at least don't understand it or care about it. I picked the World Cup and the release of a new video game because those are two things with which I am totally unfamiliar and about which the Internet-at-large gets totally excited. But this can apply to any big world event that most people love that you're just vaguely aware of. I'm sure some people feel this way about the Super Bowl, and I'm sure some felt it about the writer's strike a few years ago, and I'm sure some people feel that way about Occupy Wall Street now, or anything else that has ever dominated the news at any time. God help you if you're a Cracked fan who doesn't care about Batman (does such a thing exist?). When The Dark Knight Rises comes out in 2012, I guarantee you that 15 of our 21 pieces of content that week will be about Batman. And if you're not interested, you're just left out. Because everyone will be talking about something you're not invested in, and you just won't know what to do with yourself.
"I guess I'll ... go outside? Am I pronouncing that right?"
I cannot stress how little interest I have in the World Cup. I like sports, but not soccer, and certainly not Planet Soccer. I have all of the information that mankind has ever discovered at my fingertips, but I still refuse to Google who won the World Cup, because that answer will never be important to me. It could have been America, it could have been my neighbors, it could have been fucking space and it wouldn't matter to me. It's not that I hate soccer or the World Cup or anything, it's just that I'm not interested in the subject so hard that it sort of consumes me.
When the World Cup happened last ... (year? March? Tuesday?), I was bombarded with World Cup stories all over the Internet. And, yes, it is the whole Internet (or at least the only parts of the Internet that I'm interested in; the parts that update daily). ESPN.com's talking about every game (match? brawl?) and every player (rumbler? swordsman?) and speculating on who is going to take home the big trophy (medal? Quidditch badge?). Tumblr is full of soccer gifs and vuvuzela-related memes (since I never really dug into the story, for two whole weeks I thought there was some star soccer player called Vuvu Zela). And, because of the way the Internet works, if everyone online is searching for and craving World Cup-related content, every website that publishes daily articles is going to try to get in on that by covering something vaguely related to the World Cup, even if that site doesn't typically cover sports.
There's nothing wrong with that. It's smart business. Give the people what they're looking for. Tap into the zeitgeist, and so forth. It's only a problem if, like me, your lack of interest in the most popular subject at the time is so strong and thorough that it's almost an active apathy.
I feel the same way about new video games. At some point in the last eight years, I got really bad at video games. Maybe they got harder, maybe my eyes got worse or my thumbs got fat, or maybe I just didn't have as much time to devote to gaming as I had in the past, but the bottom line was that I could no longer just pick up a game and be good at it (at least not without letting other aspects of my life suffer), so I had to make a choice. And I decided to turn my back on gaming, because I don't like being bad at things, and if I don't ever try, I'm not technically bad at it. (This is also why I don't surf.) As a result, I'm left out in the cold whenever a new Fallout or Modern Warfare or Crash Bandicoot comes out, because it's all the Internet wants to talk about. The Internet has so many inside jokes about Portal 2 that I don't get that I feel like the nerdy kid in middle school. Because I don't know enough about video games. I go to Reddit several times a day, but I don't play Skyrim, or even know what kind of game it is. Do you have any idea how alienated that makes me feel?
3 is more correct than you think it is. I'll put it this way: I love football, I like Tim Tebow, I've never uttered a bad word about him. That is until the internet became Tebow. Can't make my sports site rounds because it got so ridiculous? Easy, go to facebook. Wrong! Not only does every sports fan have a status message about him, but so do the people who are deeply offended by the word "punt". No matter how much you like something, there's only so much you can take. If you don't care about the subject? Let's just say I'm one of the minority here that is so not looking forward to the new Batman movie. You nailed that one.
ReplyI love being in the internet Christmas Day. It's just a bunch of articles about the World Juniors Championship.
Replyyou should just play fallout and portal 2 and skyrim, they're great games.
ReplyWith that mustache, you look like Boyd Fowler. Do you put girls in barrels, perchance?
ReplyAs someone with absolutely no interest in Skyrim, I can agree with the video games one. In fact, hearing about Skyrim so much (even now) has caused me to be consumed with burning hatred towards it. As far as CoD goes, it's just the same s**t every November with a new name and new set of evil Russians to fight. They might as well make "America Wrecks Russia's Shit" and be done with video games entirely.
ReplyWhat about the ever-popular "America Wrecks Nazi Shit"?
Same exacting-fucking reason I hate April Fools day as well. Every link becomes a Rickroll and every news article is a "new" Pokemon. f**k April Fools day.
Replylol, you said videogames got HARDER? What alternate universe is Cracked located in?
ReplyWell, more complicated. An Xbox controller has 13 buttons, 2 triggers, and 2 joysticks (which also click up and down). Hand one to someone over 50 and have fun.
Crash Bandicoot. Heh heh.
I stopped visiting Cracked over the Thanksgiving weekend because of #3. It's hard to escape Thanksgiving on the internet, which is annoying for those of us who aren't from the UK! We have to read about you stuffing your faces with amazing food and having lots of fun, when we have to wait another month until Christmas to do the same =(
Reply*those of us who aren't from the US!
I'm such a derp.
eh, I'm not fond of Thanksgiving myself. The food isn't always amazing, and most of the fun is lolling around on the nearest surface to wait for more room to stuff food into.
I'm a Cracked fan, and I don't care for Batman!
ReplyLeave.
yEAHH!!!!!! spider man's the way to go!!! or is it spiderman ??
I enjoy surfing the net during april's fool :C. There's lots of pranks and cool easter eggs around ^.^
ReplyDon't worry, I didn't even know what Skyrim WAS until you said that it's a video game.
ReplyI didn't know what Skyrim was either, then I took an arrow in the...oh, nevermind.
#1 has made a f*****g jackass out of me on several occasions. I'm the guy that has no f*****g clue what date it is, and so I go online thinking nothing of the date, read some horrific/end-times April Fool's joke, and then lose it on Facebook and other places I write passive aggressive messages to people.
ReplyI agree about the Skyrim reference, my boyfriends best friend is currently obsessed with it and talking about it so I know ALL about it, and while it DOES sound like a good game, I'd have to play the rest of the series to get to it and I own none of the games :(
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesNot really. Skyrim is the Elder Scrolls 5 and I started with number 4, Oblivion. While I have tried to play Daggerfall, which came out in 1996, its so ridiculously hard that I gave up in the tutorial. Anyway, while knowing some of the lore is a nice bonus, the stories don't really follow on too much from each other. Especially seeing as Skyrim happens 200 years after Oblivion, while the other 4 games happened in one 50-year timespan.
Actually, I've been playing Skyrim for a bit now and it's the first Elder Scrolls game I've played. My boyfriend plays it too, but mostly just when I'm at work, so I have the majority of time with it. The backstory is pretty well given to you if you care to hear it, and there are plenty of books you can go through and read in-game if you're interested. It really doesn't matter that it's the fifth in the series, since I believe it's a few hundred years removed from the last game anyways. You can just enjoy it and have fun no matter what your experience level is, and the customization level is awesome so you can pretty much be whoever you want to be. Try it! I was convinced that I fell into a gaming slump over the past few years, because I just couldn't get into any games any more. I thought that I had ADD. However, this title has cured my gaming slump. I've managed to sink about 40 hours in! ..Ugh. Well, try it if you're in doubt :)
you skyrim people are strange...
Yeah being in England during the world cup was an interesting experience. They shut down pretty much everything for any England match. I think I watched one match, I knew who won when it happened, but I can't remember now who won. >_>
ReplyJust imagine how it is in Brazil. People here are CRAZY about soccer. The country basically stops every time Brazil has a match.
I hate the idea of April fool's day in itself. I don't trust people on a regular basis as it is so the idea of a day centered around not trusting people is just all around bad news to me. The concept's old and tired, even on the internet anymore. I think the best prank Google could pull for an April fool's is doing absolutely NOTHING different on that day. Man, would that confuse people.
ReplyMan, you sound like a paranoid baby. :S
Hi Dan, have my babies.
ReplyNo thanks.
To be reminded once again of the totally super awesome Harry Potter show that never was. I will have my revenge.. I WHill -.-
ReplyFor now: IGN-1 Me-0
Freakin hell, Imagine what the web is like on April Fools day when it is YOUR BIRTHDAY! Paranoia inducing!
ReplySkyrim...It's IV, right? Does that mean there were previous games I missed being left out on?
ReplyIt's V, and yes, there's a lot of games you're missing out on, obviously. This reminds me of how most people don't even know there were other Fallouts. Anyways, you should play Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, because it's awesome and you can fly.
I was going to point out that Poogle is a Neopet, but I think Google using it was supposed to be a poop joke.
Reply...People still play neopets? Seriously?
...People still own Guy Fawkes masks? Seriously?