Forums > Social Chat > Is the internet a waste of time?

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Eeyoremember
18 posts

Posted:
I use the internet several hours a day and its occuring to me more and more that the internet is a waste of time. I find that when I load the internet up I have no idea of what I would like to do. Several hours later and I still have done nothing of any use.

If I had never had a computer I'm pretty sure that I would be far more clever and a much more interesting person. I cant relate to people and even though I know I am a person that everybody would like I cant show this to people. This is all because instead of going out with my friends I thought that I would prefer to use the internet. However after several years of wasting my time I know that the internet carrys no real information but sends you in circles to see as many adverts as possible.

Its true if you are very carefull the internet can be very usefull. However it often takes hours to find the righ information by which time you could have written your essay. Looking in an encyclopedia would be far more effective.

The question is. If you could go back in time and avoid ever coming into contact with the internet, would you do so.

Personally I am completely addicted to the internet and even though I would like to give it up I dont think I could. I would say If I could go back in time and change it I would only use the internet a bit.

(Scuse the really bad grammer and such things, I find if I try and write things to look pretty they dont come out right.)

Makes you wonder really.


Astarmember
1,591 posts
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada.


Posted:
So you don't have any free will? The internet has complete control over you? The fact is if youd rather go on the computer then do stuff with friends then you could just as easily replace the internet with any other activity. I think you should deal with the root of the issue rather then blame the internet.

Tlightmember
189 posts
Location: London


Posted:
I think what Im trying to say is that the internet is addictive. Even though I know that my time would be far better speant doing other stuff I still use the internet. I dont really think that Im blaming the internet but what Im saying is that the internet is very compelling and is often not always the most usefull thing. What im really asking is what are peoples opinion on the internet. Do the negatives outweigh the positives. I think I possibly gave a bit of an extreme view of myself as somebody who sits at his computer screen all day with no friends. Infact Im probably the opposite . I actually have many friends and Im probably out more than I am in. Just to clear that up.

Thats the problem with the internet its very difficult to put down what you are thinking into text. Anyway.

I hope you realize how pissed I am.


ivan..member
165 posts
Location: Halifax, NS


Posted:
the internet is a tool ,
and like any tool how you use it is how it affects your life ...

thats right i look like an albino ape that has had a bad day.. go ahead say something stupid... i dare ya !


CharlesBRONZE Member
Corporate Circus Arts Entertainer
3,989 posts
Location: Auckland, New Zealand


Posted:
I agree with Ivan and Astar.

Perhaps you are confusing the internet with your use for it?

I use the internet for advertsising my services, confirming bookings and information and basically supporting myself and my wife.

If you choose to spend hours a day on the internet that is your choice.

If you choose to spend those hours 'socially' thats also your choice, but you can also use it for research, keeping in touch with friends and relatives, etc etc etc.

There is quite likely a site dedicated to people addicted to internet chat and ways to help them quit!

I guess, if we are making comparisons, then libraries are also a waste of time...

HoP Posting Guidelines
* Is it the Truth?
* Is it Fair to all concerned?
* Will it build Goodwill and Better Friendships?
* Will it be Beneficial to all concerned?


pkBRONZE Member
Lambretta Fanatic
4,997 posts
Location: United Kingdom


Posted:
you could be addicted if:

1. You tell your kids they can't use the computer because "Mommy's got work to do" and you don't even have a job.
2. You promise yourself that you'll only stay online for another 15 minutes...at least once every hour.

3. You dream about creating the world's greatest website.

4. You stay up late at night waiting for your spouse and children to fall asleep so you can go online.

7. You decide to stay in college for an additional year or two just so you can have the free Internet access.

8. At parties, you introduce your spouse as your 'service provider'

9. You realize there is not a sound in the house and you have no idea where your children are.

10. You know everyone at your ISP on a first name basis.

11. Your glasses have a website burned into them.

12. All your friends have an @ in their names.

13. Your dog has its own home page.

14. You wake up daily with your keyboard printed on your forehead.

15. You sprinkle Carpet Fresh on the rugs and put your vacuum cleaner in the front doorway so it looks like you are actually attempting to do something about that mess that has amassed since you discovered the internet.

16. Your goals for the future are to obtain an ISDN connection and a 6 gig hard drive.

17. You don't know what sex three of your closest friends are because they have neutral nicknames and you never bother to ask.

18. You never have to deal with busy signals when calling your ISP because you never log off.

19. Your hard drive crashes. You haven't logged on in two hours. You manually dial your ISPs access number. You try to hum to communicate with it. You succeed!

20. You get up in the middle of the might for a drink of water and stop by your computer to see if anyone you know is logged on IRC.

21. When you hear your husband's keys in the door, you quickly turn the monitor off (not enough time to shut the whole system down) and run to the kitchen to pretend you were really doing the dishes (or some other useful task).

26. Your Lawn mower is broken,(you have the parts to fix it), the grass is two feet tall, the dog is lost, and you just have two more things you want to do to your homepage.

27.You enjoy writing the applets.

28.You know twelve people called Gandalf

29.If you don't get email you get pissed off.

30.You don't think TCP/IP is anything to do with a first-aid kit.

31.Your husband hates the computer and says you spend more time with it than him.

32.You know THIS IS SHOUTING

33.You know what netiquette is and you get pissed off when others don't.

34.You laugh knowingly to yourself when reading newbie newsgroups postings.

35.You can spot a troll at five paces.

36.Your cat has its own web page (you're really in trouble if you've given them email addresses too....

37.A new version of your fave html editor, graphics package or java builder gets you more excited than a 'grab what you like for free' offer at the local MAC counter.

38.Social Life ?

39.you kiss your girlfriend's home page

40.Laundry piling up


oh thats enough, i could go on for ever.

the net is a wonderful place, chat rooms are kew too once in a blue moon, i met my soul mate and my future wife online last year. i have met hundreds of HOPPERS and majority are some of my cosest friends.
lets hope you find HOP and addiction.. were all HOP zombies.

CantusSILVER Member
Tantamount to fatuity
15,966 posts
Location: Down the road, United Kingdom


Posted:
Hey!! I have an @ in my name......

Meh


CantusSILVER Member
Tantamount to fatuity
15,966 posts
Location: Down the road, United Kingdom


Posted:
Ways to tell if you're too dependant on technology:

1. Your reason for not staying in touch with family is because they do not have e-mail addresses.

2. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three.

3. You text your son to let him know it's time to eat. He e-mails
you back from his bedroom, "What's for dinner?"

4. You chat several times a day with a stranger from South Africa, but you haven't spoken with your next door neighbour yet this year.

5. You check the ingredients on a can of chicken noodle soup to see if it contains Echinacea.

6. Your grandmother asks you to send her a JPEG file of your newborn so she can create a screen saver.

7. You pull up in your own drive and use your mobile to see if anyone is home.

8. Every ad on television has a web site address at the bottom of the
screen.

9. You buy a computer and 6 months later it is out of date and now sells for half the price you paid.

10. Leaving the house without your mobile, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go get it.

11. Using real money, instead of credit or debit, to make a purchase would be a hassle and takes planning.

12. Cleaning up the dining room means getting the fast food bags out of the back seat of your car.

13. You just tried to enter your pin number on the microwave.

14. You consider first class post to be tediously slow.

15. Your dining room table is now your flat filing cabinet.

16. Your idea of being organised is multiple coloured Post-it notes.

17. You hear most of your jokes via e-mail instead of in person.

18. You get an extra phone line so you can get phone calls.

19. You disconnect from the Internet and get this awful feeling, as if you just pulled the plug on a loved one.

20. You get up in the morning and go on-line before getting your coffee.

21. You wake up at 2 AM to go to the bathroom and check your E-mail on your way back to bed.

22. You start tilting your head sideways to smile.

23. You're reading this.

24. Even worse; you're thinking about the people you are going to forward it to.



By the way regarding number 17 in your list PK what sex are you? I've never bothered to ask

Meh


Astarmember
1,591 posts
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada.


Posted:
It's all about whatever your drug of choice is. Anything can be addictive. IMO addiction is rarely about the substances but about the personality. Im not trying to bash you as that would be fairly hypocritical but I just want you see see a angle on it you may not have been exposed to.

pkBRONZE Member
Lambretta Fanatic
4,997 posts
Location: United Kingdom


Posted:
i have no idea the internet never gave me the answer to that question, i've asked a thousand times, but, still no answers.. all i seem to find is porn.
hey cantus does my bum look big in these panties?

Kevmember
83 posts
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland


Posted:
I'd say upwards of 90% of internet usage is a complete waste of time. The other 10% is spent doing things that are possible/easier/healthier to do without the internet, or wouldn't have to be done at all if you had never bought a modem.

- Honk if you love peace and quiet!


primative_toyshappy hunting
228 posts
Location: Brisnyland


Posted:
originally created as a more effective tool for aiding and abbetting the us of a to kill people during war, i think its an absolute waste of space , on the other hand we have made a better use of it. i love all you beautiful HOPers however i do not use the internet or comps unless i have something better to do,, and my deffinition of better is something that does is something that burns more than a kj per word... get the picture,,

on another note it is a very useful and productive forum nowdays if one can show a little self restraint... the pot calling the ketle black...
i met all of u wonnderful peoples online and thats brill... and why doesnt my keyboard have a "fuck it" key...
mythmitch

regret nothing, learn everything

fire_light_movement


KajiQuantum Theorist
564 posts
Location: Vansterdam


Posted:
I'm going to school to get my CCNA (Cisco Cert. Network Assc.). Please don't say the internet is a waste of time it's my future livly hood....

BTW I can whisle phone numbers

[ 14. January 2003, 19:32: Message edited by: Frost ]

In the 60's people took acid to make the world weird, now the world is weird and they take prozac to make it normal again.


SmallBoy - xCarpal \'Tunnel
2,737 posts
Location: London


Posted:
Nets got bugger all to do with your CCNA unless you intend to use HP openview and that doesn't really come in til your CCNE.
You just wanted to drop in that u wanna be a cisco guy and earn millions..... - hehehehe

Ok - I don't often post in social any more but I thought I'd bless you with my presence - lol......
IMVHO - The net is a waste of time, it's a glorious waste of time but like all wastes of times it can be a greatly infomative and useful media if you want it to be..........
Technical discussion forum - informative
Hanging out in the intro's section when I should be working - Time killer
Same as TV :-
documentaries - informative
Soaps - Time killer
Books:-
The complete cook book - informative
Imajica - time killer

(Before anyone canes my views (You know who you are) of other time killers.....OK books are great vocabulary builders, but so is reading crap on the screen.....(well it would be, if half of the people that know how to power up a PC also knew how to spell)........and yes I know watching soaps can be informative and all sorts of other things.....but largely the people that belive this are those for who it's a form of escapism for, and are normally sad and lonely individuals methinks....... )

[ 14. January 2003, 22:23: Message edited by: SmallBoy ]

Small Lardy Person In Disguise


TheBovrilMonkeySILVER Member
Liquid Cow
2,629 posts
Location: High Wycombe, England


Posted:
Have none of you people watched Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back?
quote:
Possibly said by Holden McNeil

The internet was created for like minded individuals to bitch about movies and share porn.

For this, it's very good. Try using it for anything else and it falls down a bit.
The problem comes with how you use it though, not that it's there - just like with tv, if it rules your life then you really need to get out more. By the way, the glowing yellow thing in the sky is called the sun, it'll probably sting your eyes for a while, but you should start getting a bit of colour to your skin soon

But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.


DeepSoulSheepGOLD Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
2,617 posts
Location: Berlin, Ireland


Posted:
Well I can sympathise to some extent. I only ever go on the web at work and it's not even the whole of the web, its just HOP. But I am addicted to HOP. I'm on here from the moment I clock in till I go home and actually get pissed off when I check social every 10 minutes and nobody has posted.

My problem is that I'm a programmer and it is so easy to get away with this in here, combined with the fact that my interest in fire is 100x bigger than my interest in my job.

Although I have the free choice to decide what I do with my time I reckon HOP wins every time, until I feel really guilty or under pressure.

I live in a world of infinite possibilities.


Magnusmember
279 posts
Location: Bath, UK


Posted:
The internet is going to save the world.

Magnus... pay it forward


Papa Lebamember
23 posts
Location: Netherlands


Posted:
I consider the internet to be a huge library.
And I love libraries. It feeds my curious nature and love for information.
I also frequently visit the city library (you know with these ancient objects called books...)
I don't think one replaces the other.(funny thing is that I discovered Internet in the library some 10 years ago, access free!)

From an esoteric point of view I would say the Internet is an occult phenomenon (occult defined as: 'the collection of all that humans have ever produced'), like some kind of chrystallized astral light...

Another thing is that for some people the internet is a huge display of crap. Well let's keep it simple here, the internet makes things visible that were/are in the (real)world all the time! It didn't create them.
TV to me is something different. Tmho TV is a toilet that displays shit others have produced and you get to flush...!

And about addiction: That has nothing to do with the thing one is addicted to, it has to do with willpower.

Willpower is the ability to say no.

Papa Leba((( If all that was unseen was seen, then that which we now see would be unseen )))


UCOFSILVER Member
15,417 posts
Location: South Wales


Posted:
no

Kevmember
83 posts
Location: Aberdeen, Scotland


Posted:
Yes!

Edit: on re-reading Papa's post I have to disagree - the internet has become the only truly self-perpetuating crap in existence. In fact it is in danger of disappearing up its own arse.

[ 15. January 2003, 05:25: Message edited by: Kev ]

- Honk if you love peace and quiet!


KajiQuantum Theorist
564 posts
Location: Vansterdam


Posted:
CCNA prepares you for LAN and WAN design and Intstallation I hate to burst your bubble SmallBoy but the internet believe it or not is a WAN. The internet is run largly by Routers and WAN Switches, of which you learn how to use and set up in CCNA.

BTW CCNE? There is no CCNE (I just double checked on thecisco web site ) I'm asumming you mean CCIE. But then if you're a CCIE you're making 150,000 - 275,000 a year.

In the 60's people took acid to make the world weird, now the world is weird and they take prozac to make it normal again.


pkBRONZE Member
Lambretta Fanatic
4,997 posts
Location: United Kingdom


Posted:
see the internet is a good thing, we get to, if we like that sort of thing, watch people have discussions and arguements [see smallboy], in public boards.. at least its better than killer corrie we have to suffer on the tube most nights.

AnonymousPLATINUM Member


Posted:
Personally I think Social Discussion is a waste of a Forum... but;

Perhaps if you spent less time trawling this muck, and more time learning stuff in the technical forums youd have a different opinion?

The web offers a new kind of indulgence, and with it we need to develop a new kind of discipline

Personally, i believe that since Google was launched, most information is available to anyone who knows what question will give them the right answer, and in more technical fields, you need to have a basic knowledge of the field in order to know where to begin looking.

mmm I can see the moon really well from here

Josh


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