Technology Time Travel

I often wonder what on earth we did before Facebook.  I know this may surprise you, but I can actually recollect a time when I only checked my email 2 or 3 times a week.  And a time before that when my family had a computer the size of a smart car in our house (After that confession I should probably go ahead and admit to remembering a time before cell phones.  But if I did that then I’d have to confess to listening to cassette tapes in my youth or purchasing movies on VHS for more than $2 and then you’d want to sit on my knee and ask grandma what life was like back in the olden days and we don’t have time to get into that).

Of course, we all know that Facebook’s predecessor was MySpace but I never spent much time there.  And although I thoroughly enjoyed sites like MySpace and (the blog-world’s grandmother) Xanga I don’t remember wasting a ton of time online in college (I saved all that for grad school) on social networking sites.

However, there is one big exception to this rule.  Let me paint you a picture: my freshman year, I was (once upon a time) a cute and funny 18 year-old, surrounded by other cute and funny 18 year-olds.  We had boundless fun together.  My dorm hall (3B!  Holler!) had the most cute and fun girls all living in one place at one time.  Scientific experiments would prove that never has a group of girls gotten along more famously… or wasted their time more copiously.  It all started when Renea, our RA, introduced us to the website Hot or Not.

Lord have mercy.

If I told you how many HOURS upon HOURS I lost my freshman year to this website it would truly shock you.  It shocks me when I think about it.  It shocks me more when I look at my monthly loan payment and think of how many dollars may or may not have been wasted because, sadly, my interest in studying did not match my “Hot or Not” fervor.  I literally remember leaving dinner one night at 6:00 and spending the next three hours nonstop ranking people (Hot or Not is a website that people VOLUNTARILY submit their pictures to and then other people rank from 1-10 how hot the person is).  We would all crowd around someone’s desktop or laptop, trying to peer around heads and argue about what number we should give people.  This particular website was made infinitely more entertaining because it was a group sport and people’s varying degrees of “hot” played an important role in the ranking system.

Another freshman year pastime was Ze Frank, once again courtesy of Renea.  Probably one of my favorite things on the internet, to this day, is Ze Frank’s Pre-Date Confidence Booster’s.  The man knows how to speak truth into a girl’s life.  My personal favorites include “Are my shoes ok?” and “How’s my body in this outfit?”.  My group of friends and I still quote these to each other from time to time.  As freshmen, we spent a lot of time trying to perfect our impressions of him, especially my friend Sarah who got the accent and the lips down perfectly.

What was interesting to me as I was doing my “research” for this blog is how quickly both these web sites sucked me back in.  Maybe it was just muscle memory, but I think the truth of the matter is they’re just really awesome.  So, I’m willing to take one for the team and do a little more “research” on the subject.  Can any of you recommend any fun sites that you have fond memories of?  Or any new sites that are equally as fun to waste your time on? 

Thank you so much for joining me today on my journey through my technological life and the world wide web hall of shame.

Oh, internets. What a wonder.