6 Virtual Mysteries That Baffle Me

I was not planning on writing this post. But then I found myself engaging in the first of these mysteries and I figured writing about it might make me stop engaging in the shameful practice. (It worked, at least temporarily).

Note: this post has nothing to do with marriage.

Note 2: this post has nothing to do with anything. If you like to read posts that actually have a point, don’t read this one.

Things that baffle me about the online universe:

1. Refresh Amnesia. No one has coined this term yet that I know of, so here’s my definition. Refresh Amnesia is what happens when you keep refreshing something online (like your email inbox or your Facebook stream) in an effort to make it change, despite the fact that you just refreshed it half a second ago. Various studies have linked computer time with a higher incidence of depression. I know this. I’ve written about these studies. Do you want to know what I do when I’m feeling depressed? I go online and I start hitting my refresh button like crazy, and then I feel even more depressed that no messages seem to be loading into my inbox.

2. Sales Rank Voo Doo. It’s my conclusion that amazon sales ranks are more addictive than crack. I think this might be a conspiracy on the part of amazon to keep authors–who also happen to be avid readers–on their site longer, where they are very likely to put more books in their cart.

3. Speaking of Amazon... The algorithm that Amazon.com uses to nudge voracious readers like me into buying even more books seems to be able to see into the darkest recesses of my soul. For instance, Amazon recently suggested I might want to purchase the following titles:

* Smashed, Squashed, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed

* Help! A Bear Is Eating Me!

* The Murderous Urges of Ordinary Women

* The Faggiest Vampire

* The Cannibals of Candyland

* Adolf in Wonderland

I’m worried that these Amazon suggestions are going to get me on an FBI watch list. Why do you think Amazon thinks I would enjoy these books?

4. I used to have an addiction to this thing called Google Analytics. It measures website traffic. My addiction to checking my Amazon sales rank broke my addiction to checking Google Analytics. After all, an addict only has so much time in one day to obsessively check numbers that don’t change all that much. What I don’t understand is this: why is it that I believe checking these stats more often will cause them to change?

5. Speaking of Google Analytics, these are some of the search terms that brought people to my site in the past month:

* Spanked husbands

* Spanking my husband

* Not showering

* Spank your husband

* How to spank your husband

* Spank your man

* I spank my husband

* Spanked husband

* Spanking husband

* Why guys always touch their balls

* Why men suck

* My husband is a dumb ass

* The girl with the dragon tattoo lesbian scene

* Male junk

* Not showering for a month

* Why do men touch their balls?

I don’t know. I just found that interesting.

6. Spammers. All I can figure is that they suffer from delete amnesia. They don’t realize that none of us are reading their spam. That’s the only thing that can explain why they persist in sending it, don’t you think? Like just today I got about 10 emails suggesting that I might need a certain drug in order to get a certain part of my body that I do not actually possess to stand at attention. I deleted them as I always do. Those emails will be back tomorrow. It will be as if I never deleted them in the first place.