Online Media Cultist

If we are to believe a new string of reports streaming in from all corners of the real world globeosphere, people are hopelessly and helplessly addicted to the Interwebs and must be legislated or bullwhipped back into proper and productive offline working submission.

From the United Kingdom today we learn that workers spend too much time “wilfing” online, which is short for “what was I looking for?”

I’m going to stop right there and be the first to proclaim the hope that wilfing does not become a part of the international web lexicon. Okay, onward.

In any event, according to yet another new study on this kind of thing, it was discovered that “two out of three British Internet users lose significant portions of their time to irrelevant web browsing,” with shopping sites in particular being a culprit. Again, I would argue here as I’ve done in the past that if workers want to goof off at work, they will. Whether it be Solitaire, Mindsweeper, gossiping on the phone, or chitchatting with Harvey and Chip about the back nine at the corporate country club, there are any number of ways for workers to be unproductive if they so choose.

Can the Interwebs be a distraction? Of course, but so can any number of things, including the delightful glint of the sun on dust that just settled atop yon teeming pile of accounts receivable slips.

Meanwhile, China is laying down the hammer on its teeming hordes of gaming kids by commanding that game companies “develop a system that cancels half a minor’s earned gaming credits if they remain online for more than three hours a day.” In the era of gold farming, MMOs, and WoW, this is a serious edict in a country where 123 million are online.

Of course, this kind of statute that is a hacker’s dream, so I suspect that those who want to stay online more than three hours a day will figure out a way to do so without getting docked.

Should online addiction cause people to get worked up to a state of worldwide hysteria? I’m thinking there are probably other things to worry about. But then again, I’m an online media cultist.