The days are surely numbered in which a publication can justify reporting on a research studies that essentially lead no where. Such is the case with Adweek who posted an entire article about the Internet’s effect on work productivity. There’s also a pretty graph that gives me numbers in percentages, which they reference in the body of text as well. But as much as I find the article useless, they do raise an interesting question — 5% of this study actually said their productivity decreased since the emergence of the net.
So who the fuck are these people and why does it matter?
Well, it matters because this is perhaps the only accurate data yielded in the entire survey of research. Allow me to explain…
Old People
That’s right, I said it and with absolutely no reservation at all. And when I say old, I mean really really fraking old. Like, they only responded to this survey of questions because they got confused on where the bathroom was. But in all seriousness, old people (stubborn of mind) typically don’t “get” the net because they didn’t grow up using it. So really they probably didn’t need to take this survey in the first place but because we have laws in this country against putting them on giant icebergs and sending them out to sea, they were eligible respondents.
Country Music Fans
Most genuinely open-minded people don’t like to put exceptions on things like “what kind of music do you like” but more often than not they end up adding “…except country music.” and probably cringe for having to do so. Well, stop feeling bad friends another survey (yes I’m fucking cross BS-survey pollinating, what of it??) of fans at the CMA Music Festival in Nashville revealed that about half don’t own a computer. A slightly smaller percent said they weren’t at all interested in communicating on the Internet… and some other stuff that isn’t really worth your time for me to explain. But what is worth your valuable time is that Country Music Fans are probably represented within the 5% of non-productive workers who use the Internet. Reasoning for this is probably because they’re all still using Internet explorer 6 and surfing over dial-up in the employee office of the local Piggly Wiggly where they work. I cannot imagine what a pain in the ass it must be for them to enjoy fancy and unnecessarily long flash intro pages of their favorite artists — Examples (1) here (2) here and (3) here. Of course this isn’t every Country Music fan. Some of them also have to work in bars and churches, neither of which are choice places to surf the net.
Blue Collar Workers
Most of the people doing hard labor don’t really need to be on a computer. In this instance, I can totally see why being on the Internet at work would hold you back from having a productive work day. These folks get a pass. I should also note that people who cannot read and people who do not have arms should also be classified in this group because I can’t imagine they’d be any kind of productive at a job if they were struggling to overcome their disabilities just to use the Internet.
The Ignorant
These people just refuse to understand communication on the Internet because they do not have to. As a result, it’s always seemed more like a chore to explore uncharted territories and so they get most of their news from AOL’s welcome screen when they are online. Saying social media slang like “Twattering” sounds extra dirty to them as well. You probably encounter a lot of these people every day. It’s also likely that they’ve hired an exuberant amount of interns to handle ‘them social medias’ under the guise of it being “a good experience” or something to that effect. What’s worse is if these people have to pay actual wages for someone to use the Internet to facilitate their business. To them these wages are an annoying waste of money that go toward someone “playing on the Internet” all day long. These spiteful individuals are also in the 5%.
If the aforementioned groups of people can slip through the cracks, and be considered eligible to take legitimate surveys like this, how can you really trust any kind of statistics regarding how people use the Internet. The simple answer is you cannot. /End Rant
This post was written by Geek Journalist Tom Cheredar, staff writer for Geeks of Doom.
