Monday, May 10, 2010

The mouse potato trap

TODAYonline Columns In Real Life The mouse potato trap

THERE'S an old saying I love about new media. It goes: "When in doubt, surf the Internet." A cursory glance in public will tell you many people subscribe to this mantra when they're not sure of what to do with themselves.

They log on to the World Wide Web by reflex, the very second they have a spot of spare time. You can see them milling around, glued to their smartphone screens, oblivious to the jostling crowd. You might also notice them nursing cups of coffee while click-clacking on their laptops for hours on end.

Some take the habit much further. Even from home, you can spy them perpetually listed as "online" on your instant messenger application.

I hear the cute nickname for these people is "mouse potatoes".

In their view, it's perfectly normal to have no plans for the day, except to bum around online. And it's not anti-social if you have a buddy doing it, too, right?

Portable devices like netbooks make it more convenient to slack in cyberspace. Nowadays, you can be a couch and mouse potato all at once. To some people I know, it is a mash made in heaven.

They can toggle between channel- and Web-surfing, and dissect episodes with fellow netizens. With video-streaming sites, they can also have marathon sessions of their favourite series.

Still, the practice gets frightening when it crosses the line from time-filler to time-waster.

One of my girlfriends recently renounced her addiction to downloaded dramas. She was sick of going bleary-eyed to work after staying up into the wee hours of the morning, lapping up one Korean soap opera too many.

She was also wrought with self-disgust, the same way a reformed TV addict laments time squandered watching reruns of reruns.

"Inertia's a drug. I don't remember one week from another, or entire months," she admitted.

The last straw was her boyfriend complaining that she had nothing to talk about other than incredible plot twists: "He finally noticed she was a girl in disguise all along and fell in love with her!"

Not to take the mickey out of her mouse potato, but once she snapped out of her lifestyle (more dud than spud), I suspect other people found her more interesting to hang out with as well.

Before that, I would be secretly more keen on catching up with anyone else with real awe-inspiring exploits.

For instance, a close friend of mine travels every few months to tag turtles and hedgehogs. Next up is frogs in Thailand. Another has riveting anecdotes from tutoring underprivileged children.

I remember having a more productive existence before I, too, got sucked into quelling boredom on the Internet. I had a marvellous time teaching a handicapped kid and found time to shoot a full-length feature film.

Much as we love looking at random videos of obese cats and sneezing pandas, it's telling that we sometimes set our instant messenger status to "invisible". This is to block out niggling questions such as "Not doing anything today?"

My friend's rude awakening got a lot of us thinking: Is "online activity" a misnomer? Do we have better things to do with our time? What is the net effect on our quest to live lives that stand up to scrutiny?

Perhaps this is the "e-piphany" we need, the moment of truth that finally clicks about our lives, online and off. And maybe it's time to flip the switch.
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omg, I'm guily as charged. Remember the days, when I was still using dial-up, I spend minimal amount of time on the virtual world. And when I do, it was only to do what was required - searching for information for projects. The rest of my time was spend doing homework and hanging out with friends, offline.

Then later on, came IRC and MSN. Hanging out became more convenient than ever. I no longer have to ask permission to meet up with friends. Online, we exchanged latest gossips in school and entertainment news. I frequented IRC and made several new, faceless friends. I developed an entire social circle online.

Then came email and I was totally addicted to check it constantly for new forwarded emails, videos to watch etc. The university lifestyle also required constant checks of our emails for updates, lecture notes etc. Suddenly, I'm online 24/7 except when I'm travelling.

"They log on to the World Wide Web by reflex, the very second they have a spot of spare time. You can see them milling around, glued to their smartphone screens, oblivious to the jostling crowd. You might also notice them nursing cups of coffee while click-clacking on their laptops for hours on end."

This is so me, and the worse is, I don't know what exactly am I doing online. I am easily distracted by hyperlinks and soon forget my initial purpose of coming online. WWW facilitates multitasking, which also means reduced concentration in work and hence, reduced quality of work. These are just some side effects of internet addiction.

Would addiction to the net be a clinical condition one day? Whatever it may be, I'm not going to let myself be diagnosed with that.

SpilLeD by b|uE at 9:48:00 am