It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon, you know, that time in America where students are sitting in their rooms cranking out those two papers due Monday. Yes, we did have homework throughout the week and we did have to make time for our Thursday night shenanigans, but these are not the only culprits that have led to our weekly scheduled breakdowns and panic attacks. In fact, these offenders are even worse than our obsession with clicking home on Facebook every six seconds just to see if any new activity was detected. No, these time-stealing, mind-numbing and A.D.D.-amplifying distractions are known to all as Stumbleupon.com and Sporcle.com.
There are three different types of people who access these sites. First, you have the hyperactive procrastinators who aren’t satisfied by Facebook and therefore go to Stumbleupon to give themselves a whole new arena in which to button-press their time away. For all of you who are thinking, “What is Stumbleupon?” this site is quite literally what it sounds like. After signing in, you can click various interests of yours (ranging from sports to humor to the paranormal) and by pressing the coveted “Stumble button,” it will whisk you through random sites on the Internet that match the interests you’ve selected. Stumbleupon is the ideal site for procrastinators who love pushing buttons who don’t mind losing hours of time in the process.
The second type of people are those who want to delay their work through the most intellectual way possible; this is where Sporcle.com is a go-to-site. Although less popular than Stumbleupon, Sporcle is much more fun and beneficial. It is a site compromised of testing your knowledge in various categories, such as science, literature, entertainment and sports through a quiz-like process.
If you are a science geek, you can test your knowledge by trying to name all 118 known periodic elements in under fifteen minutes. For those more interested in sports, try naming all 45 clubs in the Premier League in less than eight minutes. And for those who want to just have fun and test your knowledge on the capitals of every European country rather than actually writing your paper on European civilizations, then don’t fret because there is a quiz for you too. Sporcle is the perfect site for those of you who want to procrastinate in style.
This last group of procrastinators is the Oprah of the television world, the Babe Ruth of baseball, the best of the best. This elite group of procrastinators uses both Stumbleupon and Sporcle to make sure their papers are done on those Sunday afternoons. Being one of these fine members, I will showcase some examples of what I’ve stumbled upon, and what quizzes to take on Sporcle.
Stumbleupon: a site that can direct you to photos that are perfectly timed (for example, a picture of a man parasailing right next to the moon so that it looks like he is actually on the moon). You might find a Tic-Tac orchestra (in which a child performer makes music on the street simply by creating different instruments only out of Tic-Tacs). Or perhaps you might see my all-time favorite site, displaying a band called the Axis of Awesome playing an original piece entitled “the 4 chord song” (if you haven’t seen this video yet, I definitely suggest you look this up). As for Sporcle, I suggest a few miscellaneous options: the quiz entitled Famous faces badly drawn is definitely both challenging and hilarious (and it’s great because they have about 4 different versions of it). The Movie Quotes (Clips) quiz is entertaining, and if you are a movie buff then this will definitely tell you how well you know your movies. Lastly, if you see a quiz that says Minefield, give it a click.
So next time you’re writing a paper, stop clicking the home button on Facebook and go to one of these sites; I promise that it will keep you captivated for hours and you will come out an addict. And for the 95% of you that already use these sites, congratulations, you are a procrastination champion.
Warning: it took me about 3 hours to write this article due to a Stumbleupon marathon; I am almost certain that I have carpal tunnel in my right wrist due to an incessant amount of button clicking.
