the Blogoholic

Photo by Aaron Escobar

Just thirty-something years ago, the Internet was something mysterious - little people new about it and even less knew how to use it. At that time, the idea of any average Joe starting his own website was absurd; something not even thought of. The whole idea of websites, HTML, and all that was very an enigma to many, let alone the idea of making money using the Internet.

Nowadays, things are different. Now, each and every human being on this earth has been introduced to the Internet. (Well, at least most of them.) The Internet isn’t something we stop to think about at any time of our day, but something we use as we breath—it just happens.

Some say that this dependence on the Internet is okay; I mean, it is helping millions communicate worldwide and is giving us access to a huge amount of information. On the other hand, others claim that the Internet is one of the reasons people have lost social skills, and that it has destroyed the minds of this new generation.

Whatever side your on, here are 101 sure-fire signs you’re addicted to the Internet. Whether that’s a bad thing or a good thing, is up to you to decide.

1. When you hear a good joke, “LOL” is the first thing that pops into your mind
2. You continuously refresh the Google homepage even though you know nothing’s going to happen
3. You check your email every 5 minutes “just in case”
4. Your parents/spouse need to email you to call you to dinner
5. You sneak away from your wedding to check your email
6. When someone asks you how your newborn baby is, you tell them that he’s still in BETA
7. You start writing HTML on dirty car windows
8. You know your online friends better than your real life ones
9. You’ve read the Google about page over 50 times
10. You can list 10 reasons Firefox is better than IE right off the bat
11. You know what IE stands for
12. You wait for your spam folder to fill up just so that you can empty it again
13. You consider places that have no Internet access “weird”
14. You won’t even consider going on vacation where there is no Internet access
15. When you do go on vacation, the only thing you’re thinking of is when you’re gonna get back to check your email
16. Everytime you hear someone talking about a website, you think they’re talking about you
17. Your heart starts racing whenever you see a website URL somewhere
18. You can’t stand hearing people talk about Internet Explorer without interrupting them and giving them 10 reasons it sucks
19. Whenever you do something wrong, your first reaction is to hit that back button
20. Your bookmark list needs it own harddrive
21. Your monitor has the Google homepage burned into it
22. You curse the people that forgot to add the word “Google” to the dictionary
23. Your single life purpose is to continue getting faster Internet; 28.8Kbps, 56Kbps, T1, T3
24. You give your only child a DSL subscription and laptop so that you can keep in touch with him “more easily”
25. When your spouse gets angry, you quickly look for the “Exit” button
26. You have no idea how your ISP calls 200 hours/month of Internet access “unlimited”
27. You ask your doctor to see if it’s possible to create a modem port in your head
28. All your dreams are in W3C valid XHTML
29. You start imitating the default MSN winks every time you want to express your feelings
30. You haven’t talked to your mother for 10 years. Hey, it’s her fault she never learned how to use Skype!
31. You leave your room only to find that your parents are dead and that your siblings have moved out
32. You open your browser hours prior to using it so that all the previously opened tabs can load up
33. You can go about your daily tasks online blindfolded
34. You know your friends by their usernames more than you them by their real names
35. Your body has a tattoo that says “This body best viewed with Firefox 2.0″
36. You start taking pills to cure your addiction to the Internet
37. You start having headaches when you’re away from your computer
39. Your online life starts to seem more important than your offline one
40. If a coffee shop doesn’t have free wireless access, you consider it blasphemy
41. You wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and stop to check your email on the way
42. You tell your kids that they can’t use the computer because “daddy’s got work”
43. You spend half the plane trip with your laptop in your lap… and your child in the overhead compartment
44. You decided to stay in college for an extra year or two… just for the free Internet
45. When you business teacher asks you the difference between “needs” and “wants”, you tell him that the Internet is a need, and sunlight is a want
46. You carry a flash drive with your bookmarks wherever you go, “just in case”
47. The last girl you hooked up with was a JPEG
48. You start using smileys in college essays
49. No matter how much your college professor tries to make you understand, you still think that “LOL” is a real word (pronounced “lawl”)
50. You have your kids faces as icons on the desktop
51. You start panting heavily every time a page stops loading; thinking that your ISP is undergoing construction
52. When you find out that you won’t have Internet access for a few days, you start crying as though your only child had just died
53. You’re willing to sit on the floor of your old apartment, where there is no furniture, just so that you can get access to the Internet where it still isn’t shut off
54. Your ISP names you “Customer of the Month” for the 12th consecutive time
55. You desperately ask your friends to loan you some money for your mother’s “important surgery”
56. Half-way to the hospital, you decide that your mother will just have to hang in there; you head on over to Best Buy to purchase that modem you’ve been eying for a while
57. You turn on the news only to find out that Tom Cruise is now president, toast causes cancer, and that the Teletubbies are gay
58. You’ve memorized every single browser shortcut and know them like the back of your hand
59. It feels “weird” when you have nothing to do
60. You know that Google is more than a search engine, and you care!
61. The choice between you kids education and the Internet bill is obvious - even though it might be tough one for your kids
62. You don’t worry about your bookmarks when your harddrive fails; you have them photocopied in a safe in Sweden
63. You constantly brainstorm things to look up on Google
64. You know why Google is better than MSN/Yahoo and you care
65. “Googling” is no longer a thing to you, but a way of living
66. You suddenly realize that you wife and children have been missing for ages
67. You search for them on Google
68. You sell your car to pay for your monthly phone bill
69. You are surprised when you go to the library and can’t find Wikipedia
70. You really think that your birthday video is going to be a big hit on YouTube
71. Your life is nothing but a blog, and the everyday events are posts
72. You try opening doors by double clicking on them
73. You constantly look for the delete button to get rid of your boss
74. You think Google knows where you car keys are
75. Your husband tells you that he’s had the beard for 2 weeks
76. You name your children after your favorite forum members
77. You’ve finally solved the mystery of the “about:robots” in Firefox
78. You don’t have a diary, you have a blog
79. When you ISP closes down, you decide to sue them for the “Mental Damage” they caused you
80. You know people online better than you know your own mother
81. Your wife makes a new rule: “The computer can not come to bed”
82. You started writing HTML code on the doors of public restrooms
83. You’ve changed your homepage over 100 times… and always ended up going back to Google
84. You refer to your age as 2.0
85. You miss a weeks worth of meals downloading the latest games
86. You try and convince yourself that you’re “not” addicted to the Internet while browsing through you feed reader’s 12,702 unread items
87. You’ve fallen for every single one of Google’s April Fools jokes
88. The only time you ever leave your room is to eat and go to the bathroom
89. You call up a plumber and ask him how much it would cost for him to replace your computer chair with a toiler
90. You start ordering all your food online and move into the kitchen so you “don’t waste any time”
91. You’re surprised to hear that your friends don’t have their own Personal Messaging system
92. You misspell words on purpose just so that you can use Firefox’s “cool” spellcheck tool
93. Your cat has it own homepage and Facebook profile
94. You refer to eating as uploading
95. You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading
96. You step out of your to find that the new Ice Age has begun
97. You call up your ISP and ask them is the snow is going to affect your connection
98. If anybody wants to talk to you, he just logs on your IRC channel
99. When your connection goes down, you spend every waking minute trying to guess your neighbors password so that you can “borrow” their Internet
100. You need a list like this to tell you that you’re addicted to the Internet
101. You predicted (right) how this list was going to end before reading the last sign

I hope you enjoyed the list! I’d love to hear some more suggestions from you guys!