The Internet’s a grand and marvelous thing, isn’t it? A near-infinite collection of facts, figures, and information. The most advanced communications tool ever developed by humankind. The center-point of the Global Village. A source of income, a creative outlet, and a whole virtual world, right at our fingertips.
It’s also absolutely horrid if you’re trying to be in any way productive.
Here are a few websites you should most definitely avoid when you’re trying to get work done (but are a great choice for passing the time if you’re bored.)
I’m going to leave out the obvious entry (Facebook) since pretty much everyone knows about it anyway.
9Gag: A collection of various comedic images from across the net, 9Gag’s gained a huge amount of popularity on Facebook, and a number of other social media websites. It’s pretty easy to spend hours just browsing the images they post, and even longer reading through the comments- which are often just as amusing as the posts.
Cracked: I don’t recall meeting an Internet comedy writer who hasn’t either written for Cracked at one point, or aspired to write for Cracked. There’s literally hundreds of articles to browse through, on all manner of topics, and it’s usually good for a laugh or two, as long as you don’t mine a bit of mature language here and there.
Memebase: To understand what Memebase is, you first need to understand the definition of a meme- essentially, it’s an image, phrase, or video that’s become popular enough to be passed around from user to user with great frequency- enough that it eventually becomes familiar to pretty much everyone who’s tuned in to Internet Culture. Memebase is a collection of modified, classic, and new memes. It also includes websites like Failblog (chronicling the incredibly foolish and stupid actions of users both online and off) and is pretty much always good for a laugh or two- or if you just want to laugh at how ignorant people can be.
Stumbleupon: Stumbleupon is probably the most dangerous item on the list. You sign up for the site, you check off your interests, and then you click “Stumble.” It’ll randomly pull up a page from the ‘net based on your interests. Sounds pretty awesome, no?
FML: FML is the ultimate exercise in Schadenfreude: it’s a website where its users upload short posts about things about their day that went irrevocably wrong. Users vote on whether or not the uploader deserved the trouble or not. Its sister site, My Life is Awesome, is just the opposite- and both are very amusing reads.
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
