It is yet another glorious Monday morning, and I am 'busy' at work, staring importantly at my laptop while clicking furiously away with my mouse, all the while keeping my fingers on the Alt + Tab keys to switch between my work spreadsheets, Twitter and the live Spurs versus Nuggets game on ESPN.
We all have our ways of wasting time at work or school, but somehow we seem to have lost the romance of it all. Gone are the days where men would sit back with their feet on the desk, nonchalantly reading the newspaper while keeping a watchful eye on the boss' office door, should he suddenly appear from his one millionth 'meeting' with his secretary. Gone too are the days when kids would pass handwritten notes between each other, filled with witty reworkings of the teachers lecture, juicy real or imagined gossip, or amusingly accurate caricatures of classmates and staff.
No, today's classroom rebels are rebelling silently, or at worst, to the sound of their fingers on their cell phone keys, and the workplace outlaws are sticking it to The Man by using the office internet for Facebook or YouTube.
In a generation as technologically advanced as ours, shouldn't we be able to find more 'advanced' ways of beating the system than by browsing a social network site? In a classic case of them vs us, the powers that be are banning a website with the same aggression that is used to ban office workers from lighting a joint in the back room. Heck, our modern-day 'pirates' look more like Jack Black rather than Jack Sparrow, sitting behind anonymous computers in their mothers basements, somewhere in Scandinavia, while 'smuggling' music and movies online in broad daylight.
It's all really pathetic.
I have nothing but love for YouTube, which brings me all forms of entertainment when I need it, but I don't get this so-called addiction to Facebook. Sure, I'm on Facebook, and I have been for years. Sure, I upload photos every now and then. Why yes, I log on at least once every day. But addicted?? It baffles me. I spend a maximum of 5 mins online at a time on Facebook; after all, it takes the average person about a second and a half to read someones status update, and multiply that by the number of people that show up on your newsfeed, that gives you what, like, a minute? Unless you're one of those carebears that loves each and every single person on your friends list equally and feel it necessary to go through each one of their updates. If that person is you, you crazy. 'Nuff said.
But again I say: addicted?? Of course, there's the small matter of these farm related games that everyone goes on about. Fascinating, really, how we've suddenly taken such an interest in cattle, livestock and produce. Fascinating and confounding. Personally, I'd be more excited about it if my clicks actually meant there was a little man in some god-forsaken village who went about planting and harvesting stuff based on what I did, but that's just me I suppose.
But, and again I say, addicted??? Apparently people like going through everyone elses pictures and photo albums, performing what I like to call 'legal stalking'. Again, I can understand the fascination with this, but how long could this last? Most people leave the most redundant and pointless comments on Facebook. My personal favourites are the barely literate "Gd job machan, proud of u, keep up the good wrk!!". The dude is standing next to a fountain. He didn't build the damn thing, so I don't know what "gd work" he's talking about, and I don't know why he's proud that his friend is standing next to a source of water getting his hair sprinkled, but to each his/her own.
Bottom line: we need a serious injection of bad-assery in our generation. I vote for everyone to step away from their computers and start living outside our little cyber worlds. If that's too much to ask, then fine, take cyber-terrorism as a hobby, followed with a dash of fraud and inter-school embezzelment for the kiddies.
We all have our ways of wasting time at work or school, but somehow we seem to have lost the romance of it all. Gone are the days where men would sit back with their feet on the desk, nonchalantly reading the newspaper while keeping a watchful eye on the boss' office door, should he suddenly appear from his one millionth 'meeting' with his secretary. Gone too are the days when kids would pass handwritten notes between each other, filled with witty reworkings of the teachers lecture, juicy real or imagined gossip, or amusingly accurate caricatures of classmates and staff.
No, today's classroom rebels are rebelling silently, or at worst, to the sound of their fingers on their cell phone keys, and the workplace outlaws are sticking it to The Man by using the office internet for Facebook or YouTube.
In a generation as technologically advanced as ours, shouldn't we be able to find more 'advanced' ways of beating the system than by browsing a social network site? In a classic case of them vs us, the powers that be are banning a website with the same aggression that is used to ban office workers from lighting a joint in the back room. Heck, our modern-day 'pirates' look more like Jack Black rather than Jack Sparrow, sitting behind anonymous computers in their mothers basements, somewhere in Scandinavia, while 'smuggling' music and movies online in broad daylight.
It's all really pathetic.
I have nothing but love for YouTube, which brings me all forms of entertainment when I need it, but I don't get this so-called addiction to Facebook. Sure, I'm on Facebook, and I have been for years. Sure, I upload photos every now and then. Why yes, I log on at least once every day. But addicted?? It baffles me. I spend a maximum of 5 mins online at a time on Facebook; after all, it takes the average person about a second and a half to read someones status update, and multiply that by the number of people that show up on your newsfeed, that gives you what, like, a minute? Unless you're one of those carebears that loves each and every single person on your friends list equally and feel it necessary to go through each one of their updates. If that person is you, you crazy. 'Nuff said.
But again I say: addicted?? Of course, there's the small matter of these farm related games that everyone goes on about. Fascinating, really, how we've suddenly taken such an interest in cattle, livestock and produce. Fascinating and confounding. Personally, I'd be more excited about it if my clicks actually meant there was a little man in some god-forsaken village who went about planting and harvesting stuff based on what I did, but that's just me I suppose.
But, and again I say, addicted??? Apparently people like going through everyone elses pictures and photo albums, performing what I like to call 'legal stalking'. Again, I can understand the fascination with this, but how long could this last? Most people leave the most redundant and pointless comments on Facebook. My personal favourites are the barely literate "Gd job machan, proud of u, keep up the good wrk!!". The dude is standing next to a fountain. He didn't build the damn thing, so I don't know what "gd work" he's talking about, and I don't know why he's proud that his friend is standing next to a source of water getting his hair sprinkled, but to each his/her own.
Bottom line: we need a serious injection of bad-assery in our generation. I vote for everyone to step away from their computers and start living outside our little cyber worlds. If that's too much to ask, then fine, take cyber-terrorism as a hobby, followed with a dash of fraud and inter-school embezzelment for the kiddies.
