Digital Dérive
I started my browsing on IMDb and ended on a blog about cocktails ran by some people in Sarasota, FL. I thought that IMDb would be a good start, since they have all sorts of different news sources for films, tv shows, celebrities, and so on. I clicked on one article and it took me to Popsugar where I watched a trailer for a movie and read a few articles about Reese Witherspoon. I looked at her incredibly expensive clothing line’s Instagram, and got stuck on that website for a while until brightly colored pictures made me click on the link to a shopping center just so I could see what kind of cupcake place they had. And that’s where I ended up on a blog about cocktails ran by a couple in Sarasota, FL. Usually I try to know where I’m going when I click on links. I try to stay on one website even if it links me to another to finish an article mainly because I don’t want to leave the site, or I have a plan for what I read next so I don’t want to go onto another site.
This strange wandering I did lead me to Instagram, a website I frequent a lot, but I usually only stay on my feed, and venture out onto explore for a short time. I got to the Sarasota couple by looking up cookies, and getting interested in a specific company. I was led to the Instagram of the mall they’re based in, and when I went onto the mall’s website to find the cupcake place, I was led to a facebook page instead of a company website. I had to back pedal and look at the other companies that had real websites, which is where I found the cocktail blog. It wasn’t a real place in the shopping mall, but it was advertised, and the only posts I could find weren’t up to date or frequent, so it was a strange website to be on the mall’s website. I thought the Cocktail Couple was a good stopping point because I had wandered so far away from where I started on IMDb looking at movie articles.
It was strange having to not have a purpose on the internet. I would never casually meander all the way to where I was, I would normally stay on the same 5 or 6 sites unless I found a reason to go elsewhere. Being on the internet just to be there is how I normally view my regular usage, but I usually have a pattern of sites I go to each day but that has evolved and changed from me clicking on sites I’d normally never go to. To think of this internet experience as a derive is strange because I guess I normally wander around sites, yet I realize it’s normally planned out because of how often I do it. This wandering mess I got into was strange and I didn’t get any new websites out of it, but I did enjoy what I looked at, and thought it was funny how I ended up.
