Wasting Time on the Internet (21 page)

What follows is a set of ideas on how to waste time on the Internet. They were authored by my class in the initial offering of Wasting Time on the Internet at the University of Pennsylvania, January–April 2015.

   
   1.   Have one person browse the Internet while connected to a big monitor. A group stands behind that person loudly screaming what to click on. It would begin by one person at a time yelling commands: Click that link! Type this into the status update window! Then it gradually increases to a polyphonic cacophony of unbearable intensity.

   
   2.   Instagram something with the intention of it being taken down by Instagram. Take a screenshot of it; keep a record of it. Instagram the screenshot. Screenshot that Instagram. If it is taken down again, repeat the process
until all you're posting is a screenshot of a screenshot of a screenshot . . . of the original photo.

   
   3.   Sit in a circle and pass your laptop to the person next to you. For one minute, they can open anything on your computer. Once something is opened, it must be left opened. You may not alter or delete anything, just expose. At the end of one minute, you pass that laptop to the person on your left and they get one minute with it. By the time it arrives back to you, everyone will have had their turn with your laptop. Everything that people have opened will remain open on your screen for you to see.

   
   4.   Delete as much as you can from Facebook. Avoid deleting friends, and avoid deleting your account. Keep a tally and see among your friends who can delete the most.

   
   5.   In a group, skype a person not in the group. Refuse to answer any questions about why you did this.

   
   6.   In a partner's Facebook account, find their oldest message and who it was sent to or by. On your own account, message that person and have a conversation.

   
   7.   Go on Netflix, and look at the first suggestion for your Top Picks. If you've already seen it, then pick the next suggestion. Read a generic Wikipedia article about the show/movie, and write a Facebook status using what you've learned (develop an opinion or a question or a statement). The status should not mention that you haven't seen the show/movie. Tag at least one person in the status.

   
   8.   For a period of hours, record your face with your webcam as you use your computer. Choose a long enough
time span that you will forget the camera is on.

   
   9.   Delete your Facebook profile picture and leave it blank for as long as you can.

   
 10.   Attend a lecture, meeting, performance, meal, or movie and be on your smartphone the entire time.

   
 11.   Sit in a circle with a group and open your laptops. Plug your headphones into the computer to your right. Play music for your partner with this goal: Make the listening environment as annoying as possible. Play music the person hates. Play several songs at once.

   
 12.   Browse only using the earliest version of Internet Explorer you can find, for as long as you can. You may not close any pop-ups or tabs that appear.

   
 13.   In a group, sit in a circle with laptops. Plug your headphones into the laptop of the person to your left and play music for your partner. Let the vibes of the music your partner plays determine the next song you play for your partner. Try to get the circle to reach an equilibrium.

   
 14.   In a public place, have a partner receive instructions on their cell phone from the other partner sending them. Have the receiver do whatever the instructions say while the sender watches from the side.

   
 15.   Find a music mashup online and write a serious review of it as though you are a
New York Times
theater critic.

   
 16.   Post something to a friend's Facebook wall as if you were talking to someone else. Be as specific as you can.

   
 17.   Find a piece of audio you believe summarizes and represents the entire Internet.

   
 18.   Find a social media profile of someone you know or do not know and re-create their profile on your own page.

   
 19.   Make a dating profile for a partner and get them as many dates as you can.

   
 20.   On an online shopping website, attempt to fully re-create what you are wearing. Then find photos of other people wearing those clothes and collect them in a folder. In a group, compare to see who can find the most photos of their current outfit.

   
 21.   Take a resume from LinkedIn or an online resume sample site and apply for several jobs using this resume, as well as an online sample cover letter if one is required. Apply to these same jobs with your own resume and cover letter.

   
 22.   Display provocative captions on a projector and cycle through them quickly. Have a group post a Facebook status impulsively to each one.

   
 23.   Take a screenshot of as many viral YouTube videos as you can. Make a slideshow that displays the images as rapidly as possible.

   
 24.   Place a camera in a heavily used room. Make sure everyone who goes through the room is aware that the camera could record them, but that it may not. Covertly turn on and off the camera during the period of time.

   
 25.   Find a very public space, sit in a closed circle with your laptops. One person selects a video from Pornhub. At the count of three, everyone clicks on the video and watches it together.

   
 26.   Find your biggest fear on the Internet and send it to a friend.

   
 27.   Think of ten friends who have different ideas about the Internet than you. Send a message to each of them asking what there is to do on the Internet. See what they tell you to do. Do nothing until one of them responds, then do it as quickly as you can, and ask another. While waiting for responses, think about what you asked them, how you phrased it, and why some did and did not respond.

   
 28.   Watch people in a public area and write down their physical attributes as if you were writing a crime report. Then look online at public police postings to find a crime with a suspect description that matches yours. Determine if they committed the crime or not.

   
 29.   Take an article you vehemently disagree with, post it as your Facebook status, and then say how you align yourself with everything it's saying. Like this status. Share it. Post it on other people's walls. Do the same thing on Twitter.

   
 30.   Interview a person for six seconds using Vine. Do not tell them the interview will last six seconds.

   
 31.   In a group, play different songs from as many devices as you can. Try to write down what you can discern from the noise.

   
 32.   With a partner, watch a short video in turns with one both recording the other with a camera as well as taking notes on the other's affective response. Put the original video, and the two reaction videos side by side in a new video.

   
 33.   Find a room or space that is reserved by someone else. Convince them there was a booking error with the online system and that it is actually yours.

   
 34.   Collaboratively take turns reading from each member's Facebook feed. Write the lines into a document as a poem.

   
 35.   Spend hours writing a document with a group however you like, but delete it when anyone leaves or enters the room.

   
 36.   Find sites of relaxation on the Internet. Spend some time on these sites and relax. When you are done, find rain sound audio on YouTube and listen to it while you write about drowning. Keep writing and writing until you cannot write more. Then delete everything you have written and move on with your life.

   
 37.   Using Google Maps satellite view, stitch together a new city. Give it a name, and invent laws for it.

   
 38.   Use a screen recorder like QuickTime to record your computer screen as you browse the Internet for eight minutes. Call a friend on Skype and make sure that's included in there.

   
 39.   Using their publicly available online profile, create a fake obituary for someone you know.

   
 40.   In public, open a laptop and surf the Internet. Have a partner watch you and the way people respond to you and the way you respond to others.

   
 41.   Ask each other about passwords. Talk about how you picked your password. Ask how other people picked
their passwords. Share your password if you want and explain what you like and don't like about it.

   
 42.   Venmo $100 to the person to your right. They must then Venmo $100 to the person to their right and so on until your money goes full circle and returns to you.

   
 43.   Find a database of scary stories generated on the Internet. In a group, collaboratively write a new story by each taking deliberate lines from the database and stitching them together.

   
 44.   Ask as many people in a public place how happy they are, and graph happiness relative to location on Google Maps.

   
 45.   Find a Facebook friend and message as many of their friends as you can asking them what they think of your person.

   
 46.   Take a compatibility quiz online with a partner. Then, check your answers by comparing your compatibility to whether your zodiac signs are compatible.

   
 47.   Create an Instagram account and use whatever means necessary to get followers.

   
 48.   Find a YouTube video and make it viral.

   
 49.   Work in a group to invent a rumor. Spread the rumor on as many social media sites as possible.

   
 50.   Go on a video chat website like Omegle and ask people to put a shoe on their head. Share the screenshots.

   
 51.   Check out as many books as you can from a library. Compare how the information differs from commonly used websites on the same subjects.

   
 52.   Create a Twitter account that only posts lyrics from a specific lyricist. Do this for as many lyricists as you would like to get to know. Have each account follow each other, plus some other accounts of your choosing.

   
 53.   Open a text document and raid a partner's computer with as much text as you can from their personal files. Send your text document to your friends.

   
 54.   Clog as much as you can. Clog online forums for your school or work. Post a series of blank posts on your Facebook feed, send a bunch of blank e-mails to everyone you know, open a bunch of blank tabs, and just clog everything. CLOG. What does it feel like to apply force to the Internet?

   
 55.   Within the constraint of two hundred words, try to offend as many people as possible in a Facebook post.

   
 56.   Narrate the life story of the person across a table from you using only GIFs. Make it as long or short as you want but make sure to highlight what you think might have been key moments in that person's life or even better, make something up. Do not caption your work.

   
 57.   Snapchat your surroundings to a partner with the timer on one second. Send only one Snapchat each minute. Try to guess where the other person is.

   
 58.   Find the first friend you made on Facebook and have a conversation with them.

   
 59.   In a library, find someone who is wasting time on the Internet. Ask them what they are doing and what they would be doing if they were being productive.

   
 60.   Go to a random urban location on Google Street View. Share this with another person and see how long it takes them to determine the location. Consider what factored into the time and ultimate guess the person made.

   
 61.   Cross arms with people in a group and use your hands to type on the laptops in front of your left and right partners as they type on your own. Try to navigate.

   
 62.   Send a Snapchat to buddies of a partner but not to them.

   
 63.   Like twenty posts on a single person's Facebook wall from that person's account.

   
 64.   Plan the most expensive three-day vacation in the world to the dollar amount using travel websites.

   
 65.   Watch a video and consciously misinterpret it. Spread your misinterpretation as far as you can.

   
 66.   In a group, attempt to find the shortest route from one Wikipedia article to another by clicking on links in the page.

   
 67.   Generate a random phrase using an online generator. For every letter in the phrase, find a song that begins with that letter. Compile the results into a playlist named after your phrase.

   
 68.   Write a travel review for a trip you didn't take. Post it, then delete it and reflect on the memory of your trip.

   
 69.   In a group, have one person choose two behavior rules. Distribute one rule to all but one of the other members of the group, and the other to only one. Make it discreet so you do not know who got the majority rule and who
got the minority. In a chat room, have everyone type and act according to the rule they were given. See if the majority can identify the minority and vice versa, and if they can determine each other's rules.