I have a confession to make: I am addicted to Wikipedia.
It is the weirdest thing is, that of all the sites that I could possibly allow myself to get dragged into like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, WordPress, yadda yadda yadda, I get stuck in freakin’ WIKIPEDIA!!! And its not that I am actually doing homework while using it; quite the opposite, in fact, because I go onto Wikipedia to avoid doing homework! When I get bored nowadays, I go on Wikipedia! I DREAM about going on Wikipedia!!!
AAAHH! I think I need an intervention!
I blame the way they’ve set up Wikipedia. The problem is when you start reading an article/entry, and see a link to another name, and you think to yourself, “Hmmm…this person/place/thing sounds very crucial to the person/place/thing that I am reading about now and am very interested in…I must check it out because now my curiosity is piqued and I will go CRAZY if I don’t figure out what this person/place/thing is all about!!!” And it happens every single time; you just keep clicking on links and getting deeper and deeper into the depths of Wikipedia, and about five hours later you wake up from your trance and realize that you have no idea why you went onto Wikipedia in the first place, where you are supposed to be, or what your name is, BUT YOU DO KNOW that Marie Antoinette might have had ovarian or uterine cancer, Charles Manson is actually still alive and well in prison, that a ’serraglio’ is an Italian word for a harem, and that the song “Hey Jude” was written by Paul McCartney for Julian Lennon after his parents, John and Cynthia Lennon, divorced.
On the plus side of things, everyone will want ME on their team for Trivial Pursuit.
Also, another thing I like to do with the site is if there is a movie that I’ve started watching on TV, but I don’t want to watch because its rather stupid but I feel obligated to at least know the ending, I go on Wikipedia and usually they have a full plot summary with spoilers, so it saves me from wasting my time. So it can be good…sort of…
I’m not sure why I get so caught up on Wikipedia. Sure, I guess I like learning new stuff, but to spend HOURS just learning absolutely random facts?! I don’t know…
I have noticed that the things I look up really have nothing to do with the sort of homework that I am doing, so it is probably just a procrastination thing. I might start out researching something, but then I end up taking it in a completely different direction. For instance, one day I started looking up something on Yoruban folklore for a paper that I am currently writing (well, I guess I am currently procrastinating on it 
) and I ended up looking at something about Battlestar Galactica. What the heck?
From Shango the Thunder God of the Yoruba culture in Western Africa:
to the evil villainous Cyclons (note: this pic is from the 70’s show):
(Oh, so tacky, so 70’s!)
Believe me, I don’t understand it either. Its like there was a blackout period where I don’t remember how I got from one place to another (I do hazily recall that Zulu creation myths were in there somewhere).
Anyway, that’s my little confession. And you want to know something really sad? My first thought after I decided that I was wrapping up this post was, “Ooh! I wonder what the article of the day is today!”
Darn you, Wikipedia.
