How I Learned to Use the Internet

The internet has been around for a long time, at least half of my life that I know for sure. It's an incredible resource of information and entertainment. But for me, it's primarily been a source of reference material and shopping for books and electronics. I searched for whatever information I needed and then returned to whatever I was working on before. I'd watch TV or play Peggle if I got bored of what I was doing. I never thought to turn to the internet for fun because I didn't seem to know where to look, until now.

Yes, I know that it's been used for fun for quite a while now. There are entire websites built for the sole purpose of fun. But that's not the type of fun I'm referring to. There's only so many times you can look at the ROFL cats before they start to look the same and the People of Walmart are all nasty and just downright absurd. Pictures don't entertain me like story does. And I don't care about piddley little Facebook games that can suck away your time. A lot of people play them, and I'm glad for them, but I need to focus on my dreams. Never mind my Peggle/Plants vs. Zombies (best games ever!) addiction that I deprive myself of for the sake of my writing.

As for how I learned how to have fun on the internet, I have to thank Facebook and I'm figuring out Twitter. I didn't realize until recently that I can click on the links in my friends posts and find new and exciting things on the internet. Prior to my recent revelation, I was content with just reading the blurb about whatever I was looking at. I know, you don't get much story from that, but most of them were silly or too damn sad. (The puppy throwing girl? Really?) Aside from the occasional glance at The Oatmeal or i can has cheezburger , I pretty much stayed on my Facebook home page until I got tired of reading the same posts over and over, then I'd close my browser and do some writing, or whatever. Anyway… a couple of days ago my sweetie posted a link on Facebook to an article that had no blurb. The link took me to a site that I'd never been to. After cruising around on the pages, I started to recognize articles that he'd read to me. "Brilliant!" I said to myself. "He always finds the best websites." And before I knew it, I was clicking links into new tabs and reading articles like a fiend. And they were funny. If you've never been to it, or if it's been a while, I highly recommend Cracked.com It's funny and I think it might be based on facts. And Drunk History is always fun and surprisingly accurate. If you haven't seen that, go watch it now. It's every bit as entertaining as it sounds.

And then there's Twitter. It's tricky, but I retweeted something today, so I feel like I'm figuring it out. I learned that if I follow interesting people, I will learn interesting things about them or they will share interesting things with me. And, I can click links on my phone and look at interesting things everywhere. It's always been my goal to gather a lot of wisdom, and now I have access to wisdom that's entertaining and informative pretty much all the time. I only wish that I'd figured this out earlier.