Derive
I began my internet adventure in the usual way — by typing a random letter in the Google search engine and seeing where it would take me. In this case, it was the letter W. Walmart and Walgreens weren’t exactly intriguing, so Whitepages it was (https://www.whitepages.com/). That didn’t really work out though. There was no one I could think of to look up. The layout also wasn’t conducive to exploring. There were no links or categories to look through without having something specific in mind. I didn’t need to do a background check or reverse a phone call. So within seconds, I moved on.
I didn’t know what to go to next. Where does one go from Whitepages? What about Yellowpages? Yellowpages has stuff. Stuff that I can look at, ooh and ah over. The homepage for Yellowpages was significantly more inviting than that of Whitepages. Bright colors, pictures, and deals popped out. I scanned through the local deals in Columbia. There were a million things to look at: spas, games, food, and more. When surfing, it was late evening and the pictures of food were quite tempting. I was a little hungry, so food in Columbia was the first thing that I actively searched. The first place I saw that I haven’t been to was Main Squeeze. A quick click and I was on their website(http://www.main-squeeze.com/menu/). Vegetarian foods and smoothies abounded. I searched around the site, spending a decent amount of time on their food menu. All that did was succeed in making me more hungry, so I hopped to their smoothies list. I never realized that there were so many things you could add to a smoothie. Adding kale seems a bit blasphemous. After finding a promising new place to eat, I went to look at things I could make at home.
Clicking out of Yellowpages, I looked up easy dinner recipes on Google. Several looked promising, including a Mac and Cheese recipe. Then again, Mac and Cheese is always delicious. However, I quickly remembered why I needed to stop looking at food. It just kept making me hungry. So I asked my roommate for random things to look up. She suggested online shopping. I agreed, since you usually can’t go wrong with window shopping (or whatever the Internet equivalent is). Ebay was my first shopping site to visit, since I don’t normally go there. Unfortunately, I didn’t really see anything I wanted to look at. So I googled “cheap women’s clothing.” A ton of sites popped up, so I investigated ones I’d never seen before. That quickly became boring, considering I didn’t actually need to buy anything.
Thus I was back to Google. What to look for? Shrimp! Shrimp? Shrimp it was. Shrimp recipes, shrimp definition, or shrimp article. I read “Absurd Creature of the Week: Ferocious, Fearless Mantis Shrimp Is the Honey Badger of the Sea” by Matt Simon (https://www.wired.com/2014/01/absurd-creature-of-the-week-4/). The article was the best part of my wander around the Internet.
Looking at items wasn’t as much fun as seeing what people write and think. The whole experience reminded me of a stream of consciousness exercise. Flitting from one site, one thought, to another was fun and oddly freeing. I would definitely recommend spending time exploring the Net.
