Week 1: First post

I'm a huge fan of interesting facts, and one of my favorite things to read are infographics. They are lovely and informative, sometimes funny, witty, and they make me think about how I ought to have paid more attention during that Photoshop course I took when I was 17.

Credits

The Internet is a big part of my life. I began utilizing the Internet at the age of eight or nine, although I was strictly limited to educational websites like the now-defunct Sparklepals. Now, I spend many hours on the Internet- probably more hours than I care to admit. Besides surfing sites such as Tumblr, YouTube and Facebook on my laptop from around eight at night till late, I also regularly check my phone for any Instagram or Twitter updates. The first thing I do in the morning, before even getting out of bed, is to check my Instagram and Twitter accounts.

I know it sounds pretty obsessive and silly to spend that many hours on the Internet, but I don't have that many hobbies that most would commonly associate with teenagers these days. When I'm offline, I enjoy reading, hanging out with friends, watching movies and shopping as much as the next 21-year-old girl, but I don't indulge in common teenager-oriented activities such as clubbing. Instead, I use that time to scour the Internet for updates, pictures and videos about fashion, my favorite Korean pop groups and TV shows.

The Internet has certainly come a long way. Take YouTube for example. In the past, I had to sit by the television to wait for MTV to play my favorite Avril Lavigne, N*SYNC or Britney Spears music video . The feeling of being able to catch your favorite song on TV was utterly amazing back then; you would have thought I'd hit the jackpot just by watching my reaction to Westlife belting out my favorite tune on the TV. Today, I simply turn on my laptop and watch the latest EXO or Girls' Generation music video on YouTube, and I would be able to loop the video as many times as I'd like. I can even catch full foreign TV shows on YouTube, like my current favorite To Catch A Predator, which would otherwise never be shown on local TV. I still remember the novelty of MTV back then, but that feeling has been replaced with convenience, which I appreciate.

It is now nearly impossible for me to go a day without the Internet. I once joked to my father that my iPhone's 3G connection was my lifeline, with the 4G-LTE connection being a power up boost. Through this course of COM125, I would like to find out more about the mechanics of the Internet- hopefully in a layman manner that is suited for me.