What's That Word?

There's gotta be a term for when you go to YouTube (or the internet) and start watching videos (or reading articles), and there's another related video (or article) that catches your eye. So you click on that one, and then another one, and another, until you've gone from the political to the heartwarming to learning how to make fire from a 2-liter bottle of soda, and you look at the clock and see that two or three hours have passed without your having accomplished anything.

But I don't know what that word is. Or even if there is one.

But anyway, I did it again today.

It started when I was checking my twitter feed. Somebody had a link to Brit Hume describing the motivations of the Tea Party, which he nailed. Then when I tried to reply to one of the comments, YouTube made me log in, which put me at the YouTube Home page, where there were a bunch of "Recommended" videos, along with the merely "Popular" ones.

They recommended a video of a dog whose military owner came home from deployment, and that led to a brother surprising his sister at her graduation, and then the Ellen Show where a military family got to Skype with Dad, who was still deployed. After that one, I found a British reunion of a Royal Navy dad and his daughter, right after his daughter got finished singing before the Queen. I love the way the girl runs to her father. And then Toby Keith had a reunion on stage for a military wife and her returning husband. Those reunion videos always make me cry.

I didn't want to keep getting up for Kleenex (no, I wasn't smart enough to bring the Kleenex box to my desk), so I moved on to other things.

This one, on the material properties of fire ants in large quantities, was fascinating and creepy at the same time. I'm not sure why this was in the Recommended list for me, unless it was because a few months ago I spent part of a Saturday doing this same endless rabbit trail through YouTube but with science-y, survival-type videos.

On the Popular list, today anyway, is this short video of why relativity isn't always relative, or something. I'm a little surprised whenever I see science stuff listed as popular, because most people don't admit to liking science.

And then I noticed for the first time (yes, I realize everybody else in the world who is internet savvy knew this years ago) that I have a YouTube Playlist, which is all the videos I've "Liked." Most of them are songs, so then I had to find some more songs because some of my newer favorites weren't there. Like Big Daddy Weave's Redeemed and The Only Name (Yours Will Be), The Afters' Broken Hallelujah, and Hillsong United's Oceans. And I just now noticed that I need to add Mandisa's Overcomer.

So that's been much of my day, and I still don't have any term for the YouTube (or internet) wanderings, beyond "rabbit trail." I guess I'll have to go with that one for now, unless you've got a better one.