Internet Trance ...

Internet Trance
[in-ter-net trahns]
n., a state of complete mental absorption or deep musing that occurs when a simple Internet-related task begins quite innocently (e.g., looking up a useless bit of trivia, checking a sports score, downloading a song, doing a wikipedia search) and then ends up taking much. much longer (sometimes a few hours) than you anticipated because you have allowed yourself to wander/surf/meander all over the internet; this is often due to the saturation of hyperlinks in most Internet content (blogs, news articles, effective ads, etc.); One is able to "trace" the path of an internet trance by looking in the "history" section of one's browser.

The trance can also be site-specific, as some sites have such vast content that one could kill hours of time without out ever leaving a domain name. Examples include a Wikipedia Trance, a MySpace Trance or a Facebook trance.

For example, this morning I was looking up something about CSI:Miami for an intro to a freelance article for another publication. From there I read about David Caruso, then NYPD Blue, then Mark Paul Gosselaar ("Zak" from Saved By the Bell), then Saved by the Bell ... and then I ended with reading about Dustin Diamond (screech from saved by the bell). I never ended up finding the information about CSI Miami that I was looking for ... and due to my internet trance, I killed about 30 minutes and filled my mind with more useless info.