The Deuce Club, 9.24
***
by Jackie Roe, TW Social Director
Evening, TWibe! So I'll be honest: I haven't watched a second of tennis since the U.S. Open ended. Aside from scoreboarding a few matches and checking results at the end of the day (so I know that Gasquet is performing well in Metz, hence the photo selection), I've completely ignored all that's gone on. I even missed Davis Cup! I'm not proud of it—and it's made me feel a little out of sorts, actually—but at the same time, it's a relief to know that I can still function normally without tennis. I've been more productive, too.
Or have I? Let's be real; even without tennis, I still have a million other diversions that prevent me from making a dent in my to-do list or going to bed at a reasonable hour. I started thinking about where I waste the most time, and the answer was obvious—on the Internet.
I assume I'm not alone in this, especially among this group, which seems pretty Internet-savvy. And yet I'd be surprised if any two of us spent our time on the Net in the same way. I asked folks around me about their biggest time-wasters online (I like empirical research, what can I say) and heard everything from "artsy/design blogs" to "eBay" to "FAIL Blog" to "a Transformers message board." (A resounding "yes" to FAIL Blog. Our own Jenni introduced me to that one and I don't know whether to thank or curse her for it. As for the Transformers one, I wanted to high five my friend when he said that, not because I know a thing about Transformers but because it’s so wonderfully quirky.)
As for me, the majority of my online time is actually spent communicating with others, whether via e-mail, instant messaging, or Skype. I often condemn technology for bastardizing communication—whatever happened to face-to-face contact ... or calling people?!—but it's proved to be a godsend for connecting with friends and family living in different states. Countries, even.
And then there are the social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter (and TW to an extent, no?), where I also spend a fair amount of time keeping in touch with people. They might be more useful as stalking tools, though; come on, you know you do it.
Another obvious one is YouTube. I find tunes there, look up tennis clips, numb my brain watching genius creations like this. Which reminds me, we should do another installment of our YouTube series. If you have suggestions for topics, let me know. (So far we've done the TW Music Festival, TW Dance Party, favorite tennis videos, tennis players' theme songs. I think that's it? We're long overdue for another one!)
You get the gist. Share with us now the websites you spend all your time on, the ones you check obsessively and can't do without. I actually think this will tell us quite a bit about each other. It may also result in greater productivity losses as we'll have plenty of new sites to explore, but we won't focus on that ...
Enjoy, and have a good weekend!
[If Pete's CC post gets too jammed with comments, feel free to move match calls over here.]