Internet Addictions

86 days.

One of the nutty things about the utter explosion of the Internet that has taken place over the past fifteen years or so (amazing it's only been that long) is Internet Addictions - and you know exactly what I'm talking about. The little time-wasters that at one point seem like harmless fun that soon enough eat hours and hours of your time.

See: Farmville.

Farmville has made me absolutely dread going on Facebook because I really don't give a damn if your watermelons are ready for harvest.

Or how about Twitter? 100 word statements on the world. That's what we've digressed to because that's all our attention span can hold at any given time. I'm sure there's quite the research paper to be written about the decline of blogs in favor of Facebook and Twitter. Something about, "The less I have to hear from you, the better."

But that's not what this is about. This is about my latest Internet Addiction.

Flickchart

At first glance, it seems harmless enough - just like they all do. You make an account and suddenly, there's two movie posters on the screen. Your job is to click on the movie that you like best. If you've seen neither, click that you've seen neither. The website then proceeds to use that clickage to determine your favorite movies ever. Simple stuff, right?

Tell that to the hours that have gone by the next time you look up and realize how much time you've spent clicking. Luckily, I've avoided doing this as a daily thing... for now. But the few times I've done it, it's very easy to get into a, "Oh, just a few more. I'll just wait til I get 100 rankings... okay, 200... holy crap, what time is it?"

As of this writing, I've rated 557 movies at a total of 2628 rankings.

And yes, the fact that I've seen at least 557 movies is quite another topic for discussion.

Regardless, I highly recommend stopping by Flickchart. You won't regret it... well, you will... but not at first!

Oh, and according to the machine (this is how Skynet starts), here is my current Top 20. It's got a few flaws but on the whole, it's difficult to argue with.

20. Clerks
19. Rocky
18. Casino
17. The Usual Suspects
16. Rain Man
15. Back To The Future
14. Gladiator
13. The Fugitive
12. The Silence Of The Lambs
11. Die Hard
10. The WIzard Of Oz
9. Jerry Maguire
8. Braveheart
7. Fight Club
6. Pulp Fiction
5. Jurassic Park
4. The Empire Strikes Back
3. The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers
2. The Shawshank Redemption
1. Star Wars

Like I said, hard to argue with most of that.