Hey...

this might sound like sort of a weird question, but, do you really surf a lot? When I hear my aunt or uncle - somewhat older - talking about the web, they usually envision it to be endless, huge, a territory yet to be conquered, and nearly infinite opportunities to do something new and shiny each day.

I don't know if I really surf, or surfed, ever. I did try looking for cooking blogs once, but nothing really came of it. I do ask questions determinedly, like you always have someting on your mind to need spme help sorting it out, so you can either google the question or ask in some forum. I do read news websites, on politics, tech news, or some of it. I don't think I really hang around and look for new movies that might come out in a few months and no one yet had ever heard of them.

Am I a stranger here? When you try to find a GREAT photo on something, when you spend an hour, the result you can find out about is usually enormous.
So, what do you think, are your habits here sort of flexible? Do you try finding out about cool new pages, new ways to think of things, new refinements to hobbies you have already?

Greetings,
Pete

[osiris]

It's become a bland wasteland devoid of soul, except for the usual propaganda, news, macnn, and porn. Yep, that porn, oh man.

I use the internet for research. What would require days in a library for 6 or 7 hours straight is now easily accomplished in a few hours, that's a powerful tool.

[subego]

Research was already covered.

Currently I've let myself get caught in the TVTropes tidal pool. There's enough there for the hour of reading I need to wind down.

[BLAZE_MkIV]

Its a great way to connect with people who share a hobby or pastime. Been a long time since I hit random on wikipedia though

[Doc HM]

Originally Posted by subego 

Research was already covered.

Currently I've let myself get caught in the TVTropes tidal pool. There's enough there for the hour of reading I need to wind down.

Heh TV Tropes is fully awesome. And you get to learn usefully useless stuff as well.

[subego]

Despite the other wiki doing a surprisingly good job of being "objective", the concept works a whole lot better when you drop the pretense, as TV Tropes does.

[jmiddel]

I like that question, Peter. To surf in the ocean seems to me, non-surfer, to imply putting oneself in a position of both knowing the waves, and the unpredictability of nature, a situation of continuous adapting and learning. If we surfed the net this way, we would have somewhat unpredictable waves of information raining in on us, which would challenge us to sort and assimilate relevant data and adapt.
That is not how I, or most people I know largely use the Internet. We are in control, googling targets and chasing down the most promising leads like hounds in the hunt. Rarely do we actually follow some free associative links, just for the fun of it.
What would it be like if, in our web searches, some random process would give us on occasion a totally surf-prising result?

[Shaddim]

I sometimes get involved in Wikipedia clicking and then realize I've lost a couple hours.

[subego]

Now I've jumped pools to 1d4chan.

Say what you will about 4chan (literally... that's a challenge) if you're at all into 40K, /tg/ does some brilliant shit with it.