Do you ever, in your wanderings round the internets, think to yourself that there's a small possibility that there's just too much stuff out there?
This question occurred to me last night, as I logged into a social networking site, and was presented with the blurb from the site, which is obviously intended to enthuse potential new users into signing up, and using this site, instead of one of the, oh-god-how-many other sites.
For me, however, being greeted with "We've got so much content that if you started watching when you were a baby, and watched all day, every day, you'd be dead before you could watch it all." And THIS is designed to encourage us to use the site? Instead I'm filled with an overwhelming sense of despair, from the knowledge that I will NEVER, ever reach the end of it.
There's a world, literally a whole world, of stuff on the internet, and I'm afraid I don't have time in my whole life to see it all. What if I miss something in which I might have been interested because it's not in my list of things which I know interest me. How will I know if I have an interest in bacon related lol-cats (insert topic of choice here) if I don't know it exists?
So that's my main concern. But then there are the subsidiary worries - should I be outside getting more fresh air? Will I die, hunched like a wizened homunculus* over my steaming keyboard, as I try to experience everything the web has to offer? Should I be trying to get a life, meeting real people?
I have signed up for very few, it has to be said, social networking sites. I did jump onto the FriendsReunited site when it first came up, but Facebook and Bebo (and their many copycats) have passed me by. I find it perplexing that people who haven't got the first clue about how to make their print jobs come out can work with the bewildering array of options available on Facebook and the others. And then I think I may be spending too much time worrying about social networking, because isn't that where people go if they want to find incriminating evidence against you?
I've also failed completely to be sucked into the wonder of the MMORPG, content to remain in the last few years of the dark ages (or 20th Century, as we have come to call it), playing only Tomb Raider, and actually enjoying the story. I've tried (very hard, you understand) to watch my nephew play World of Warcraft, but after enjoying the scenery for about 5 minutes, I found the game play rather repetitive. You run around and kill things. You can do quests, a piece of knowlege which filled me with hope for a few seconds, until I realised the the quests all seem to involve running round and killing things. Sure, the graphics are pretty good (better if your machine doesn't run like cold treacle, I gather), and the environment is lovely to look at. The characters seem pretty flat, though, and any point of the game (are you working towards anything specific?) escapes me completely. I think I will have to consider myself a bit of a MMORPG luddite.
What else am I missing out on, due to the sheer volume of stuff?
*Thanks, Lois McMaster Bujold, for a lovely phrase. I can't remember which book it comes from, but it's definitely from the Vorkosigan universe.
Recovering Data
15 years ago
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