Stay Focused… Fight Linkage
Too many links can lead you into the high weeds on the internet
I love the internet, who doesn’t? When I was young, I never could have dreamed of having all the world’s knowledge at my fingertips. But lately, I seem to have trouble concentrating. Is it age? Do I have ADHD? I think the problem is there are just too many links.
I don’t think I have a physical problem. But the internet, with its multitudes of hyperlinks, seems determined to convince me otherwise. It’s like trying to read a book while someone keeps tossing confetti into your line of sight. My theory is that the people who create web pages have no idea about the appropriate use of links. They just create way too many distractions by adding unnecessary ones. There actually is a name for the situation when you have too many; it’s called the cupcake effect.
One of the problems is the “You May Also Like ” phenomenon. You’re just a few sentences into an engaging article when you run into a hyperlink offering you an option of a seemingly better, more fascinating one. They seem to want you to wander off on a related story. It’s like the article itself doesn’t want you to stay. It’s the Pied Piper of hyperlinks, serenading you away from its own content. It’s as if the original article has developed an inferiority complex and decided to shield you from its supposedly uninteresting content by sending you elsewhere.
There’s also The Moving Target, just when you are getting into what you start out to explore on a page, you see a link, you aim your cursor, and you’re ready to click. But just as you press down, the page shifts. Suddenly, you find yourself clicking on an entirely different link. It’s the cyber equivalent of a game of Whack-A-Mole. Just when you think you’ve got the target, it ducks, and you end up hitting something else.
And let’s not forget the old Down the Rabbit Hole link, the Wonderland of the Internet. One minute you’re reading a benign article about the relaxing effects of birdwatching, and the next thing you know, you’re starting to believe the government is using dead bird drones to spy on you. Half an hour later you find that you’ve wandered so far off the beaten path, you can’t even see the breadcrumbs anymore.
Another form of distraction is the Boomerang Effect. This is where you start reading, only to get sidetracked by various links leading you far astray. You click on a link to learn about charcoal versus gas, which leads you to an article about fossil fuels, and then another on environmental conservation. Just when you think you’re lost in the digital wilderness, a link somehow brings you back to where you started: The 10 Best Environmentally Friendly Barbecue Grills." you’re back at your starting point.
The 6-Degrees-of-Wikipedia Phenomenon: Here, you start on a specific Wikipedia page, say, for Kevin Bacon. Six random links later, you’re knee-deep in the mating habits of South American monkeys. This game of informational hopscotch makes you wonder if there’s some cosmic rule that everything on the internet is just six clicks away from monkeys
The Search Gone Wrong: I remember when I needed to set up power for our new house. Our electric company is the Pennsylvania Power and Lighting Company or PPL. A search for PPL and hookup didn’t give me quite what I expected. Apparently reading PPL as people and hookup as, well hookup. And you probably can imagine what happened to an elderly friend just introduced to the web. He wanted to research fishing equipment at a local chain called Dick’s Sporting Goods. He entered “Dicks" into the browser
Now consider the Flypaper Link. Much like its namesake, this link captures you and just won’t let you go. You’re cruising through an article, and then suddenly, a link catches your eye. You click on it, expecting to quickly grag the info and return back to your original content. But much like a fly on flypaper, you’re stuck, there’s no backlink.
Of course, there is always the Classic Clickbait, you got to love it, it doesn't even pretend to be anything else,” The Outrageous Truth about Green Gummy Bears Will Destroy Your World,” delivers just what it promises.
The Trick-or-Treat link, promises useful information, but instead, it leads you to a dead website, a 404-error page, or worse yet, a site that hasn’t been updated since the dial-up internet days. The trick? There’s no treat at the end of this hyperlink.
The Doppelganger Maze: This is when you come across multiple links that lead you to almost identical pages. The website names might be different, but the content is eerily similar. It’s like running into evil twins in a labyrinth; everywhere you turn, you see the same face.
So here we are, navigating through the shadowy alleyways, doppelganger-filled labyrinths, confetti showers, haunted houses, and never-ending scrolls of the digital world. Hyperlinks can lead us astray, confuse us, frustrate us, or even scare us. But they also offer a unique adventure, transforming a simple trip online into the Bermuda Triangle of hyperlinking, and it happens to the best of us.
Whatever the case may be, remember: the lure of the hyperlink is strong, but you have the power. Resist the siren song of the off-site link, stay your course, and finish that article. Or don't. The beauty of the internet is that the choice, like the next hyperlink, is always yours.
