March 29, 2011 - 8:22pm
Online Diversions of the Week — 1/12/10
BY JEFF SANFORD
The Internet, like the mind, is a terrible thing to waste. Sure, Facebook creeping and searching for your professors on the sexual offenders registry are both infinitely rewarding ways to spend your online time, but the Interwebz offers us so much more. Each week, we’ll foray into Web-land and take a look at some of the most mind-numbing, soul-destroying, perfectly diverting diversions the Internet has to offer. Because if you’re not wasting time online, you’re…uhh…doing stuff. And who wants to do stuff?
Perhaps the best and the worst thing about Facebook is that very stupid people have the power to say very stupid things in very public ways. Failbooking.com seeks to exploit the devastatingly hilarious, hilariously devastating awkwardness that lurks whenever a user hits “Post.” Structured like the venerable FAIL Blog, Failbooking lists highlight after highlight of (mostly) real-life Facebook fails. See highly dysfunctional mother-son relationships play out with the poignancy of Shakespeare (“Mom get off my balls I’m aboutto(sic) block you”). Chuckle smugly at the Facebook novices who unknowingly publicize their most personal confessions (“i split my vag…i had to get 13 stitches”). If anything, Failbooking will make you think twice about the ways in which you use Facebook. Post with caution, friends.
Do you enjoy a good whodunit? What about slowly coming to realize your repressed prejudices? If you said “Hell yeah!” to either of those, maybe you should consider a rousing game of Pick the Perp. This lovely website presents you with questions like “Who was charged with Obtaining Property in Return for Worthless Checks?” and then gives you a menu of five real mugshots from which to choose. Your challenge: to pick the person you think committed the crime. If you’re not horrified by your latent racist intuitions, then you’re not trying hard enough! Bonus points if you correctly finger someone you know.
