I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore
The other day, I found myself looking at a blank address bar in a new tab in my browser. I wanted to waste time, but… I didn’t know how.
By Dan Nosowitz
The other day, I found myself looking at a blinking cursor in a blank address bar in a new tab of my web browser. I was bored. I didn’t really feel like doing work, but I felt some distant compulsion to sit at my computer in a kind of work-simulacrum, so that at least at the end of the day I would feel gross and tired in the manner of someone who had worked. What I really wanted to do was waste some time.
But … I didn’t know how. I did not know what to type into the address bar of my browser. I stared at the cursor. Eventually, I typed “nytimes.com” and hit enter. Like a freaking dad. The entire world of the internet, one that used to boast so many ways to waste time, and here I was, reading the news. It was even worse than working.
In high school, I took a computer class. I have no idea what I was supposed to be learning. Instead I browsed Fark (user-submitted links from around the web, sort of a proto-Reddit) and eBaum’s World (a mix of early memes, stolen content, and ads for hard-core porn), and printed guitar tabs that would turn…
