The Procrastinating effects of Youtube, Facebook and Peggle

Oh internet, how you mock me sometimes!!!

Hello friends,

Thanks for dropping by to read my wibble. I have managed to tear myself away from my three main procrastination vices in order to put a blog together about the very vices that keep me from writing blogs and doing important things. I shall deal with them in order, so as to service each one of these cheeky chappies properly. So, onto the first mega procrastination tool :

Oh You Tube, I love and hate you in equal measures.

1. You Tube   

You all know about this site, it's one of the biggest in the whole world. It has birthed such lumbering bloated stars and starlets as Justin Beiber and Jessie J. Millions of people have watched Lady Gaga shaking her 'non' arse around while miming her shitty lyrics through her horse face as an advert selected just for you by google appears at the bottom. Oh what a site! It really did use to be something great, before it got bought out by Google of course. Now it is mainly a place for big media companies to share their latest promotional bull-dribble ( X Factor anyone?!) while independent artist like myself struggle to get a hundred views on our latest work because it doesn't get displayed anywhere.

Before googles takeover of youtube, it used to feature new talent on it's front page. This helped people like J Bibbles and Bo Burnham become stars. Their video's were put in prominent places and seen by many people, turning their bedroom songs into world wide hits. I joined you tube too late, by the time I made my own profile and started uploading sweet original video's, Google had crossed the t's and dotted the advertising dollar i's and new user content was assigned to the depths of the internet.

I spend hours on this flipping website everyday. Since I set up the Products of Monkey Love profile and started uploading video's I have been hooked. There are just so many amazing video's to see, not the ones on the front page (which doesn't even really exist anymore thanks to "profiles"), but within the millions of uploads from all around the world. I have made friends through youtube, more so then facebook, because of the comments system. The comments are what make you tube better then TV in all ways. TV keeps trying to catch up with this ability to comment and interact with what you have just seen, but it's well behind and is unlikely to catch up to the internet. I love watching a video, good or bad, and then seeing what comments have been posted about it. Time wasting to the max.

2. Facebook

This bloody website, now just a people made spying network, sucks my time out of me with pointless checking on people I don't even really like to find out what shitty stuff they are up to in the hope it will make me feel like I'm doing something of more worth by checking on them. I don't do this anywhere near as badly as some people I know, some of my friends are proper facebook addicts, borderline obsessive compulsive. I mean, do you really need a facebook farm? Really?

I haven't fallen for any of facebooks many 'super' procrastination tools like the farm, or online poker parties, or tetris marathons etc. I can even most of the time avoid the need to click through peoples photo's and change the tags to be their pets instead of them. It's the news feeds that get me, reading what other people who I know consider to be in some way 'new' information. I do the same though, I post a load of old maguffin on there about what i just did and how special it was, or some amusing programme i just saw has made me want to post a clip of it onto my page like a little badge of "I've seen this"-iness.

Facebook just makes idiots out of us all, the people on there, and the people that think they aren't on there (you are on there, either way my friends). If you have a profile, every other part of the internet now wants to connect with it and merge. Facebook is now an add on to your other internet activities. Are you watching a nice video about kittens on Youtube? Well, why not connect your account up with facebook so you can instantly tell the world what you are watching, as you watch it. Soon everyone will constantly film themselves reacting to things and then post it direct to their facebook page with interesting quips about 'what happens at 3 hours in' and 'I bet you can't guess what film I was watching' type games that make everybody their own mini celebrity in their internet bubbles.

I am a celebrity in my internet bubble, so I have no right to piss on anyone else's chips, I will just piss on my own and be happy with it.

3. Peggle 

The greatest Procrastinating tool ever invented.

Damn you Peggle! Damn you to computer game hell! Why are you so addictive? Why?!

If you have never encountered this game then I suggest you avoid at all costs, not because it is rubbish, but because it has an addictive quality that has been scientifically proven to be more soul consuming then heroin, crack or trip inducing cough syrup. Unfortunately there is no alternative, no way to ween yourself off the hard pure peggle hit. Even worse, there is a sequel, Peggle Nights, which is just as addictive and just as potent. Combine these two modern drugs and you are left with a dribbling human being who is only capable of communicating in beeps and bongs with the occasional 'aww' thrown in and grins of pride whenever 'Ode to Joy' starts up.

I have been working on a new album, writing a bunch of songs that I will use to net myself a band of some kind (I figure that worms are bait for fish, so songs are bait for musicians, right?!), and I am now nearing the end of that task, with only one song left to write to finnish the 12 i had set myself. I would have finished this task several weeks ago if it wasn't for Peggle. Shooting the pixilated ball bearing at the blue and orange pegs is so satisfying and easy, it becomes like a juicy birthday cake, you know that one slice is enough, but you could always have another, and another, and another, until the whole cake has gone, it's 4am and your fingers and eyes are hurting. I think I might be getting my metaphors all mixed up here.

Anyway, Peggle (by PopCap) seems like it's a game of luck, but this couldn't be further from the truth. There is great skill involved in becoming a Peggle Master, and many hours must be dedicated to this important training if one if to get the massive gold trophy at the end of the Peggle rainbow. There are several characters to master, some with special powers that seem so lame you wonder why they are sitting at the big table with such masters as 'Magic Hat' Bunny, and the 'Johnny shot' Owl. It's not all animals you have to master either, oh no, one of the characters is a flippin' Pumpkin for jimmies sake. I would have thought the bunny and the owl would have eaten up the pumpkins sorry ass a long time ago, but then there is a Unicorn overseeing the whole thing, and a Dragon which probably helps keep the others in check.

Just writing about Peggle makes me want to play it, I have it open right now behind this blog, waiting to be played at any moment. It claims first prize as 'Ultimate Procrastination Toll' of the year for the second year running. And now I just have to go and play or else...

Till next time ;)