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.

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: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

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"...

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!

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.