Entertainment, News

10 Better Ways to Waste Your Time Online than Click-Bait Articles

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By Kalman Dean-Richards

Okay, well for starters, I can only think of six, so that’ll have to do you for now.

That’s my main problem with click-bait, really: falseness. If some thirteen year-old English graduate had genuinely discovered 26 GIFs that alphabetically prove Dennis Bergkamp was Gunther in Friends, I’d be well on board. But alas, he has only two convincing ideas and by ‘J’ they’re not even funny enough for me to stick around for the image to load.

Like Stan told Dido in two-thousand and something: “I just don’t like being lied to”.

The internet’s great when Cindy’s just broken up with Damon and she wants to tell us how much of a whore-bag he’s been. By the time you’re at the bottom of your feed, though – and he’s apologised and they’re getting married – what more is there to do?

I mean, you’re paying a very reasonable £50-a-month for your phone bill. It’d be irresponsible of you to waste that bargain by simply watching some telly or playing the new Star Wars Battlefront demo because you have a vague memory of watching a friend play the original and it makes you nostalgic. Very irresponsible.

That’s why Auntie Kalman’s back, sportsfans.

True to my word, below is a list of better things to do online than double-clicking the Fuzz-Bead (oh what a line that is, baby). Some of them you’ll do anyway, but that’s okay because it’ll just prove how cool we both are.

1. Get yourself a Reddit

Reddit is the internet’s biggest online forum site. That sounds crap, bredditut it’s basically a Facebook for things you like rather than people you don’t.

Make an account and search for ‘football’, ‘kittens’ or ‘Crash Bandicoot The Wrath of Cortex Glitch Videos’, and you have a news source that you can be bothered to click past the first page of and a group of people who want to talk about it.

2. Start a Kickstarter

For your self-indulgent projects that no-one would actually commission. Then realise that even thick internet people aren’t that thick.

Kickstarter’s a donation-based funding source.

3. Hackertyper

This one’s more of a representation of all of the stupid but fun little things that are available if you go out of your way to search for them.

Go to www.hackertyper.com and play with it for about two minutes and then probably never again.

Other options similar to this include:

• Search bodily anomalies to see if other people share your freakish attributes.

• Use Stumbleupon for five minutes until all of the content’s garbage.

• Watch 30 seconds of porn, skip to the end and delete history.

4. Watch movie trailers

Everybody likes going to the pictures. Everybody.

Open up a list of films that are coming out soon, and watch a couple of trailers on Youtube. It might stop you from wasting three hours on every Emily Blunt (the tax dodger) blockbuster that you saw advertised on the side of the 59 and it looked okay.

5. Read my last article again

Described as ‘humorous and witty’, my piece about m2000px-Youtube_icon.svgoving to Manchester had some great lines that you should really be reminding yourself of once or twice per-day.

Really, though, read opinion pieces on your favourite newspaper’s website. It’s amazing how much more interesting and funny you can seem to your friends if you steal other people’s opinions.

6. Shop for t-shirts that are ‘pre-washed’ and ‘non-iron’

So you never have to wash or iron them.

7. BONUS! Decide it’s all crap

But don’t go back to newlyweds Cindy and Damon – make something of your own.

Take photos and make videos:

  • Record your miniature dachshund jumping over various obstacles and laugh at it because it’s less evolved than you and cute.
  • Film yourself volleying a Haribo into your friend’s mouth.
  • Snap your roommate in the shower and set it as your Tinder profile picture because he has better abs than you do.
  • Write a click-bait article that’s worth reading.
  • Troll me in the comments section.

As far as I see it, the internet is about asking the right questions, not just clicking something because it can give you an answer that you never wanted. It’s about that and hardcore porn.

The possibilities are figuratively endless.

About the author / 

aAh!

aAh! Magazine is Manchester Metropolitan University's arts and culture magazine.

No Comments

  1. Kalman 23rd October 2015 at 3:44 pm -  Reply

    Don’t tell me what to do with my free time.

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