How To Waste Time On the Internet When You're Bored

Are you bored? Do you have too much of that darned nuisance that we call "time"? Do you have many things to do but would rather just procrastinate instead?

Well, look no further! I would be honoured to be your guide as to ways to waste time on the web. "Waste" is probably the wrong word to use, because as John Lennon said, "Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted."

Perhaps "unproductive" is a more suitable word. Or procrastinating, if you have a work deadline looming or a school test or college exam coming up that you really should be studying for.

Anyway, without further ado, here is your list!

When looking at browsing aimlessly, a great place to do it is youtube. By searching generic terms like "cute" or "funny" you have a virtually unlimited supply of videos. You can also view music videos and some movies or TV shows that haven't been deleted by copyright claimants yet.

Here are some search term ideas in case you can't think of any:

• funny ads
• cute animal
• scary video
• spoof (for best results on this one, insert your favourite TV show or movie into the search phrase too.)

To get you started on your youtube adventure, where hours will fly by without you even noticing, is a kitten waiting below. At the time of writing this article, this video had 48,785,590 views on youtube. Isn't that incredible? The power of the internet *sigh*

Also below are some llamas I hope you never meet.

Now you can window shop without leaving your chair! Go onto eBay or Amazon to buy everything you never knew you always needed.

A fun searching strategy is to type in a very generic term, like "ring" or "lucky" and organize the search results to show the most expensive items first. You will be amazed what some people believe their stuff will sell for! On eBay, I once saw a "lucky hand carved buddha" that the owner was trying to sell for 21 million dollars. I'm not joking. Be careful though, clicking the wrong thing here could be the most expensive mistake you ever make.

Or you could actually, you know, be serious and buy things you need. But where's the fun in that?

Reddit is the ultimate internet time-sucker, and is both the best and worst website simultaneously. The most time you spend on it, the more you realize you're just at the tip of the iceberg, and there's more "subreddits" with too much content for anybody to digest in a single lifetime than you ever imagined.

Reddit contains everything from discussions about religion and politics to memes and pictures of cats.

If you like a laugh (and who doesn't), you can't go past web comics. Everyone's tastes are different, but comic websites I'd recommend for a laugh are Cyanide and Happiness and Gibbleguts. Also Pon and Zi is good, but a different sort of funny. It's more sad. And cute.

Some of my personal favourites are below. I didn't want to upload them here for copyright reasons, but click on the links to see them!

Comic 1

Comic 2

Comic 3

Comic 4

Cubestat is a website that determines how much other* websites are worth. Why not type in all the websites you like and look at all the zeros in amazement, then imagine if you had that much money? Alternatively you could type in your own website address.

You can also see the number of visitors per month a site gets, which is cool.

I'm not sure of the reliability of these sort of calculators, but it's fun nonetheless.

*You can also type cubestat into cubestat if that's what floats your boat. It works, I tried it!

This is a brilliant website. Every day, they offer a computer program that usually costs money absolutely free.

There are no viruses or anything, and it's a legit site with permission from the creator of the product. The producers of a product offer it up hoping to get feedback from people who download it about how to make their product better. They also get a lot of free publicity (according to cubestat, they get nearly 900,000 visitors per day)

There are a lot of funny people out there in the world. If you look, you can find ads for people wanting to buy time machines.

I don't know whether the people you'll find genuinely want to marry pillows, become mermaids or find wish-granting genies or are just trolls, but either way it's funny, eh?

Start your search with google, yahoo answers or your local online classifieds site (who knows? You might find something you actually need while searching)

Hubpages is a writing community, where you write articles, post them online and get paid from advertising. It is great fun, and incredibly exciting watching your total page views go up (as well as your earnings). Hubpages has a great community. There are active forums, and people leave thoughtful comments on your hubs.

Some people earn hundreds of dollars through hubpages every month! This can be passive income, because once you've written the article you continue to be paid for views and affiliate sales.

Click here to join up (it's free!)

Do you want to see new places, but can't afford the travel tickets? Why not explore them on your computer, with google maps street view! Bonus points if you see something funny: guys coming out of strip clubs, people picking their nose, people getting pulled over by police and all other weird things all count!

In fact there is a website designed especially to post funny things found on google maps. Check it out here.

A list of top ten google street view moments is here as well.

Do you have some gullible friends? Traumatize them by thinking a scary online dude knows everything about them! The way Peter Answers works is simple.

First, you write a line of a petition. This is either "Peter, please answer" or "Peter, please answer the following question". You then type in a question, such as "What is the name of the person sitting next to me?" Peter will answer correctly, and your friend will be amazed.

What they don't know is that in the petition, YOU answer the question. First you type a full stop, then you type in the answer to the question you will ask on the next line. As you type, what you are typing will not show up on the screen. The petition will instead. Once you've finished typing the answer, press the full stop button again. Finish off the letters of the petition to make it look complete, and then type in the question.

Practice before messing with the mind of a friend, so that you don't stuff it up.

They can type in a question too if they want, but unless they know the secret, they will just type in the petition to the petition box, and will get a generic answer, such as "Please give me the next question" or "The language you are using is not mine".

Have fun with optical illusions!

WARNING: Optical illusions that appear to move may make you feel sick or dizzy. If you feel sick or dizzy, exit the optical illusions pages immediately.

Why did you buy me THAT? is a website where users can upload photos of terrible gifts they have received, like a bag of popsicle sticks, a teacup with a face on it, or a book about incest treatment recommendations from the person's grandmother.

Fmylife is a website where people post short, amusing anecdotes of things that have recently happened in their lives to make you feel better about yours.

There used to be a similar website called Lmylife, where people posted good things that had happened to them. It was nowhere near as popular, and doesn't exist anymore. What?! People don't want to hear stories about how awesome everybody else is doing? Fancy that!