Top 5 Most Deadly Websites For Office Procrastination
Let’s face it: we all do it. All it takes is for one excitingly titled article or an ill-timed email from a coworker bearing that fateful link and before you know it an hour has disappeared and you suddenly know more about the sexual proclivities of sea slugs than anyone else in the office.
The primary reason for this appears to be the simple fact that some sites are just pure online crack, carefully engineered to lure innocent surfers in and then never let them leave.
Here follows a list of some of the most irresistible siren sites of them all; be strong, lest they claim ye too. Or again. Or make you open up another tab on the same site because you were already browsing it.
Yeah, we’re all screwed.
5. Facebook & Twitter
Despite the disdain with which we usually treat most of them, social networking websites are undeniably powerful things. If you happen to leave them logged in at work, the Facebook and Twitter tabs will regularly inform you of the number of things you’re missing out on by focusing diligently on your work, taunting you as the bracketed numbers rise higher and higher.
When you inevitably give in you simply have to see what’s been said it, who said, if it involves you and comment if necessary. Oh, and also detag those horrific photos of yourself from Dave’s party.
4. Cracked
Cracked advertises itself as a humor website, and to be fair, it is generally pretty funny. For the most part it features interesting content combined with eye-catching titles and images, the prevalence of the list format making its articles even easier to read (and thus get lost in).
Just one more, you think , casting your eye over the several others you’ve already added to your growing queue of Cracked tabs. I can totally finish reading this before my lunch break is over. Just one more …
3. YouTube
Because moving pictures always make things more fun (and, if you’re feeling particularly lazy, often you don’t even have to read anything). While this is frequently hampered by a lack of sound and/or headphones in theoffice space, some videos can get their message across without them (likethis one, for example).
YouTube’s insistence on including those pesky related videos means that it’s highly likely that watching just one video can and will turn into six (or maybe ten on a particularly good/bad day).
2. Wikipedia & TV Tropes
Lumped together as they are both wikis. Wikipedia (and indeed most wikis, really) encourages endless periods of link clicking, luring you into reading the myriads of related articles that are linked within the first one you started reading.
At its core, TV Tropes is simply a wiki cataloging common conventions in fiction, film and television. However, once you start reading, it becomes so much more than that. Reading TV Tropes is a magical adventure where you could start off reading about the depictions of Queen Elizabeth I in cinema and end up finding out exactly how much Japan loves harem anime.
1. Stumble Upon
Do I even need to explain this one? Stumble Upon is clearly the devil incarnate, sent to tempt us away from our more productive endeavors.
Speaking of which, check out this neat thing I found on Stumble.
