The Internet — Enabler of Guilty Pleasures

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "'Sure, the Internet has revolutionized the spread of information and all that high-minded stuff, but its combination of reach and anonymity also makes it the greatest enabler of guilty pleasures ever invented,' Jason Fry writes in the Wall Street Journal. 'Indulgence is just a click away, and nobody needs to know, except you and some server somewhere.' For example: Fry, a rock snob, has a double secret life as a pop-music fan (secret no more, of course). From the article: 'If your secret love of "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" has caused it to creep into your iTunes list of 25 most-played songs, a simple right-click will let you reset the play count. If you want to hear Fall Out Boy, but would rather do so in secret, you can command Last.fm to ignore that the song was played — or delete it from your charts if you forget. Viewed from the standpoint of cool logic, this behavior is at least mildly insane. But who needs things that remind us of who we really are, as opposed to how we want others to see us — or how we'd like to see ourselves?'"

Comments

Oh so true

[lixee]

I caught myself watching MTV's "Wanna come in" few minutes ago and gave myself a slap.

Re:Oh so true

[Anonymous Coward]

Once, I was on vacation to Virginia to visit some friends, and we ended up at Suncoast Pictures. So I went to the back, grabbed the first tentacle rape hentai DVD I could find (Twin Angels, I think it was), walked up to the counter, slapped it down, looked the (cute young female) clerk right in the eye and said in my best slightly-above-indoor voice, "I'd like to buy this tentacle porn."

Probably my finest moment.

(I guess the point is that no everyone is afraid of what other people think.)
(Then again, I'm posting AC...)

Re:Oh so true

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you missed your face with that slap and queued up "can't touch this" in winamp.

how pop?

[justkarl]

FRom TFA:

Given such freedom, hipsters can let their inner dork out for a romp, extolling the virtues of the Arcade Fire by night and retreating to their headphones by day for a Hanson or Boston fix.

I think that Boston and Hanson are two totally separate things. Boston can be filed quickly under Classic Rock, but any god fearing man who listens to hanson even behind closed doors, in my book, might need a psychiatric evalutation.

Re:how pop?

[kfg]

. . .any god fearing man. . .

If God wants take issue with me he come on around and I'll mmmmmmmm bop 'im.

KFG

Re:how pop?

[Jamil Karim]

Well, it's good to see that the absence of your "stupid prejudice" has enabled you to no longer worry about how others might think of you, Anonymous Coward. =)

Guilty pleasures?

[Anonymous Coward]

If by "guilty pleasures" you mean jacking it to man-on-man pornos while refreshing slashdot in another tab, well ALL ABOARD THE SLASHDOT EXPRESS!

Re:Guilty pleasures?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"If by "guilty pleasures" you mean jacking it to man-on-man pornos while refreshing slashdot in another tab, well ALL ABOARD THE SLASHDOT EXPRESS!"

Speak for yourself. I visit Digg, too!

Re:Guilty pleasures?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you mean that Digg was not that gay porn site?

pleasures! noo!

[s388]

yes, it's revolutionized the spread of information, BUT

BUT! it's become the greatest enabler of pleasures ever invented.

horrible.

everybody get back to your miserable farmwork!

Guilty Pleasures

[LordPhantom]

True enough..... I caught myself tapping my toes to Nickleback's "Savin' Me" until I saw....

BSG Season 3 promo

Some blogger far more witty than I commented that "The only show that could make them sound -good-". That's now my excuse. Yes, that's it.

Is this song...?

[cayenne8]

"If your secret love of "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)"

Hmm...is this song from the soundtrack of Brokeback Mountain?

No wonder he wanted to hide that one....

:-)

Clerks 2

[Rik Sweeney]

I think they put it best in Clerks 2:

"What's the point of having an internet connection if you're not using it to look up weird fucked up pictures of dirty sex you'd never have yourself?"

Anonymity?

[HugePedlar]

'Indulgence is just a click away, and nobody needs to know, except you and some server somewhere.'

Tell that to those AOL users. ;)

That one chick from Hanson is really hot!

[spun]

(Family Guy reference in case you didn't know)

Peter Griffin - If you could have any woman in the world, who would it be?
Quagmire - Taylor Hanson.
Joe Swanson - Taylor Hanson is a guy.
  [Pause]
Quagmire - [Laughs] You guys are yankin' me. "Hey, let's put one over on old Quagmire."
Peter - No, he's actually a guy, Quagmire.
Quagmire - What? That's insane. That's impossible.
  [Pause]
Quagmire - Oh god. Oh my god. I've got all these magazines. Oh god.

Re:That one chick from Hanson is really hot!

[bickerdyke]

Now let's talk about "Tokio Hotel"...

Yeah

[dtfinch]

You wouldn't want anyone to know if you're into this.

We All Have Our Little Secrets

[The MAZZTer]

Now excuse me while I wipe my cache of slashdot pages and cookies, don't want my friends finding out...

I know what they mean

[Lord_Slepnir]

I'm guilty of this myself. Sure, by day I wear an button with Elan and Banjo on my ESD lab coat, hang up pictures of my fiance and I dressing up like Pompey and Vaarsuvius (from the same comic) outside my cube, and reading Linux Kernel Device driver books for fun. But by night, when no one is looking, I'm over at sportsdot and playing fantasy football.

*cries*

Re:Not just "mildly" insane

[greg_barton]

If you don't have the self-confidence to like what you like, and the hell with the rest of the world, you are (in my book) suffering the deepest kind of herd mentality that deserves disdain at every level.

So, what you're saying is, "If you don't defy the herd, the herd should enforce herd defiance behavior!"

Welcome to the herd, bubba!

No-So-Divine Intervention

[Bones3D_mac]

The new defense for the evils of all mankind:

"The internet made me do it."

Guess this means the devil can resume his duties as President of the United States now.

Re:The internet is really really rad!

[ahsile]

The internet is for porn!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eMs_OjoBRcY

Re:Wasn't it easier to do these things decades ago

[soft_guy]

If I wanted to listen to New Kids on the Block without letting my Metallica friends know, I'd just go out and buy the tape and hide it in a different place than my regular tapes.

What is this "tape" you speak of?

He's posting from 1986.

Euphemism

[mypalmike]

The article is about how the internet enables "guilty pleasures". I believe the author is using the term "pop music" as a euphemism for porn.

Me personally...

[aliendisaster]

I show off my guilty pleasures. There's nothing funner than driving down around the mall looking for a parking space blasting "Mmmmm Bop" or "Safety Dance" as loud as possible. All the lil "I'm so emo. I'm going to go buy some black clothes" teenagers just look at you like WTF? It's hilarious.

Re:It's not the stuff on my machine that bothers m

[Rob T Firefly]

If that's the most disturbing thing that happens in your local theater's men's room, then things have really changed since I last went to the movies.