Time Suckage

My old-school blogger friend Ariel is writing a book pitch around her 52 Nights Unplugged project, and recently sent out an e-mail:

The sample chapter I’m writing this week is I sat down to check my email, and woke up watching kitten videos: Internet addiction time warps.

I’d love to hear your stories of your worst web time warps, and why you think the internet has the ability to suck your time out of your hands until you find yourself at 4am thinking “Wait, is it Tuesday? Where have I been?”

Oh, man. The biggest time sucks I’ve ever had consist of YouTube clips of “So You Think You Can Dance.”

That’s right, the campy dance version of FOX’s American Idol. That in itself is only slightly humiliating, but combined with the power of YouTube has single-handedly brought down hours of sleep and/or productivity. What? Through the power of Wikipedia, I’ve learned that Greece, Australia and Germany have their own version of the show? Well, I HAVE to watch ALL of the performances. ALL OF THEM. I mean, they’re only two minutes.

And that’s where the time suck comes, I suppose. You’re watching two minute performances, but you’re watching DOZENS AND DOZENS of two minute performances. Same goes for Wikipedia. It only takes a minute or two to scan an article, but then you see a link and it’s so EASY to click on it and learn more information about reality shows in Germany and/or Austria, that you glance at the clock and it’s already three in the morning.

Watching thirteen year old girls fight on YouTube come in at a close second.

(I’ll let you know that I just spent the past hour looking at MORE SYTYCD videos. And I think it may be time for me to start going unwired as well.)