More Addictive Than Crack, More Entertaining Than Porn

After four hours of catching up on back issues of Time and Newsweek that have been doing a better job of collecting dust than keeping me up-to-date on world issues, you would think I might have had enough for one day.

Wrong.

Tonight I find myself surfing Newsweek.com and Time.com to see what else is new in the last, say, 6 hours and 43 minutes. After previewing next week's cover story on Michael "billionaire" Bloomberg, I came across a story about Facebook. It was mildly informative but nothing new. Fortunately, as all good news stories are, it was followed by a number of "related stories" links. Which led me to another sort-of boring story about Facebook.

I thought I might give up, but honestly? Reading about Facebook is almost as addictive as actually using it. It fascinates me that adults are fascinated by things like DogBook or how people select photos for their albums. Is it really so important that it needs to be analyzed to death?

I found the answer to my question as I read this article:
"Facebook: More Popular Than Porn" by Bill Hanser
Apparently young adults in the college-aged category look at Facebook more than they look at porn. That means the answer is yes: anything drawing more of a college-aged audience than porn deserves great analysis by middle-aged men because, seriously, what else are middle-aged men looking at online? They can't imagine anyone (or at least any guy in his prime) wasting time on anything else.

As for me personally, I breathed a sigh of relief. Obviously I am not the only one who checks Facebook incessantly. Even right now, as I write this post, I am intermittently checking Facebook.

But why? What could possibly have happened in the last 30 seconds that needs to be seen immediately lest the Earth implode? Joe Schmoe joined a group? 7 of my friends are attending some event somewhere sometime? Suzy Lou changed her status?!?!

So I decided that tomorrow I am going to count to see how many times in one day I check Facebook. And if it's more than 20, I might slash my...Ethernet cord. I'm sure Facebook would survive without me.