Going Down a Rabbit Hole

by Chris McGinty of AccordingToWhim.com

I wrote a blog post touching briefly on the idea of the internet not interesting me the first couple of years that I was truly aware of it. What changed my mind was being able to listen to music not normally available to me and reading work that wasn’t published by the then normal means.

The rabbit hole is another thing that is probably not a new experience, but to me the way that it happens on the internet is endlessly entertaining.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone, and at some point three hours into the conversation you find yourself backtracking the conversation to figure out how you possibly got onto the subject of using tallow to make soap and candles when you distinctly remember that you were discussing the most recent episode of “The Adam Carolla Show” at the start of the conversation? Sorry, that’s oddly specific, but surely you’ve had that kind of conversation.

The wonderful thing about the internet is that even when you’ve gotten older and you no longer get to stay up all night having these conversations with your loser friends, you can sit up and be a loser on your own. Have you ever wondered how you got to those videos of women who are asking men to send them money and in return they’ll insult them and make them feel useless? Well, I’m still wondering how exactly I got there. I started out reading about debt reduction and ways to make money on the internet. I think I got distracted by the “Hey, I’ll see what this cute woman in the recommended box has to say on the subject” without realizing exactly what I was getting myself into.

I think the best internet rabbit holes are when you clearly remember starting off reading Mark Rosewater’s Q&A blog, and something said in the comments gets you to look up something you were unaware of, and three hours later you’re wondering exactly how you ended up listening to Malcolm X being interviewed. Or some other version of “How the hell did I get here?”

I’ve heard people use other terms than “rabbit hole” to describe these excursions. I prefer “rabbit hole” because I’m a fan of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” If you’ve never read the book, I highly recommend it and its follow up “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.”

Chris McGinty is a blogger who made the mistake of looking up baseball player Dave Parker after a summer long rabbit hole of theme writing just to see what Mr. Parker looks like now. Google now believes that Chris McGinty is a blogger who wants baseball scores sent to his phone. He doesn’t. He truly doesn’t.