So you've been together with your romantic partner for a while now, but how do you know whether or not you're falling in love? In the initial stage of dating, it might be hard to pinpoint what your heart is telling you and you may have a surge of mixed intense feelings all at once. You might be unsure of whether or not it's merely physical attraction, infatuation or the real deal. Moreover you may be wondering what your partner thinks of you and if they've given any thought towards developing your relationship even further. How do you fully decipher your emotions? How do you fully decipher your emotions? Here are 10 signs to tell if you're falling in love: 1) You find yourself trying new things When people fall in love they often step out of their comfort zone and engage in activities or interest their partner favors. You find yourself curious to learn more about them. So you begin to participate in their hobbies or eat their favorite foods. This in turn also h...
Top 10 Facts About Internet
10. Homophobic Slurs Are Used Millions Of Times Per Day We live in a very progressive society; it seem like every week, news will hit that another part of the world has legalized gay marriage.Despite this, homophobia is still more common online than exclamation marks. For example,since July 5th, 2012, one of the most offensive sexual slurs around has been used more than16 million times on twitter ALONE. Of course this is just on Twitter, the site where you're invariably making these statements on a profile that your face is linked to.We don't think we need to say how quick homophobes come out of the woodwork when anonymity ispresent but, just in case, we'd like to direct your attention to this article on Jason Collins,the first openly-gay active NBA player. The comments, when sorted by which ones have themost upvotes, become offensive within exactly 1 comment, where someone claims that him comingout is an attempt to claim he's being discriminated against. Come on, Internet, we know you'rebetter than that. At least, we hope you are.
9. Only 1% Of People Create Online Content Online, there's a little thing known as the1% Rule. In a nutshell, it states that 1% of people create the content of the Internet,around 9% of people contribute to that content through comments, votes, likes, and shares,and the remaining 90% or so in no way participate. Using this site as an example, even the lists with many thousands of views will probably only have a few dozen comments at most. Thesame can be said for the thousands of other sites out there; the vast, overwhelming majorityof people are happy to simply consume the content without participating. Which is fine,as by simple virtue of reading a site, you've aided it by providing your page view. However it's the 9% part that's depressing,since it's this vocal minority who are most likely to be critical of the content. Now,we're not targeting people with legitimate concerns or constructive criticism. If wemiss an entry on a list or make a spelling mistake, tell us about it. We're human, andwe're bound to make mistakes. It's the small section of people who do nothing but be critical,mean, or generally unpleasant just for the sake of it. Though those people are very mucha minority, just remember that every person who creates content online is outnumbereda thousand-fold (at least) by people willing to instantly tear it down. For every person willing to start a blog,make a video, or take a photo, there are a hundred people waiting with bated breath totell them it sucks for no other reason than "the lulz." And that's a terrifying thought,since people creating original content are already hard enough to find online.
8. Internet Commenters Will Never Change Anyone'sMind As mentioned above there are a small, butnonetheless significant, number of people online willing to be a complete wang to othersfor no other reason than that they find it funny. In that same vein, there are also anumber of people waiting for any chance to start an argument about an issue they feelstrongly about. Maybe it's Obama, maybe it's the environment or atheism; whatever it is,these people will argue back and forth with other commenters for hours, throwing factsat each other like they're out-of-date yogurt. We think it's safe to say that, in the entirehistory of the internet, no one has ever held up their hands and said, "actually you'recompletely right. Let's stop arguing." The reason for this is very simple: changingsomeone's mind is almost impossible, online or off. In experiments, it has been shownthat when people hold a very strong belief, facts to the contrary, regardless of how reliablethe source is, will almost never sway their opinion. In fact, in some cases, proving ortrying to prove someone wrong only strengthens their belief in how right they are. QuotingCarl Sagan quotes at a religious person isn't going to make them abandon a lifetime of faithanymore than the guys on the street handing you pamphlets are going to make you want toworship Odin. It's just the way we're hardwired; if you've spent 25 years believing that anall-powerful deity is judging you from beyond the stars, or that Batman is the absolutebomb, or that abortion is wrong, that's going to be very difficult to stop believing. Ourminds just aren't designed to have years of things we "know" to be true shattered in aninstant, which is why we'll internally justify away such explanations and keep on believingwhatever it is we believe. Now here's where this gets dark: think ofhow many times you've seen an argument online about, well anything. Think of the hundredsof message boards where people are arguing about things right now: religion, politics,video games, films, which superhero is the best, etc. Think of all the millions of hoursthose places have sucked from people's lives, and now realize that almost all of that timehas probably been wasted as you slowly begin to weep for humanity.
7. Even When People Try To Help, They CauseMore Harm Than Good Remember the Boston Marathon Bombings? Ofcourse you do, it dominated the headlines for weeks. However, one aspect more than otherswas focused upon and scrutinized in great detail by the wider media, mainly the activitiesof sites like Reddit during the tragedy. In theory, aggregate sites like Reddit area brilliant idea. In practice however, it has its hiccups. For example, during the immediateaftermath of the bombing, many users of the site were quick to try and help in any waythey could. One of the most misguided was a subreddit dedicated to finding the bombers.Again, in theory this was a good idea — thousands of eyes are better a few — however, thesearch quickly became a game of circling anyone with an all-year suntan and a backpack. Seriously.Reddit's version of "finding the bomber" almost immediately became a racist game of circlinganyone who was "brown and alone." Although this was obviously done with goodintentions, it led to both innocent people being victimized, and mass reporting of falseinformation. You have to admit, it's a little disheartening to know that thousands of peoplededicated their time to a singular cause and ended up causing more harm than good. Boy,we hope Reddit never tries to cure cancer.
6. Women Are Routinely Victimized. Like, ALot Sexism online is a hugely divisive topic.In one corner, you have thousands of women saying they're uncomfortable revealing theirgender online due to fear of people being a colossal asshat to them, and in the othercorner you have colossal asshats saying this isn't a big deal because it's not happeningto them. We're sure anyone reading this could easilytrack down an anecdotal tale from a female who has suffered some sort of abuse onlinepurely because of their gender. The mere fact that such an idea exists caused our officewhiskey budget to increase by 40%, but we digress. Dealing purely in facts, the resultsare equally as soul-crushing; 63% of female gamers report being abused solely due to theirgender, and are 4 times more likely to suffer abuse in general. And female bloggers aresubjected to torrents of abuse so vitriolic and offensive we tried to quote them here,but they were flagged as viruses. But here's the thing: women represent virtually50% of the online world, a world where everyone is technically equal. Yet even in a virtualspace they have to deal with people being mean to them, and speaking out about it onlymakes the abuse get worse. If you're wondering where the lonely Internet-browsing virginwho is terrible with women came from, now you know. Gee, thanks everyone! As if makinga living online wasn't hard enough.
5. Millions Use Adblock, And It's KillingThe Websites They Enjoy Remember where we said that, just by virtueof clicking the link that led you to this article, you've contributed to this site insome way? However, if you're using Adblock, you're not. In fact you're not doing anythingfor the site other than slowly sucking away the precious lifeblood that is our revenueas we slowly sink into Internet obscurity, or something. Most sites earn money from how many peoplesee the ads featured on them. An apparently little-known fact is that you never actuallyhave to click an ad on a website for them to make money from it. As long as you seeit, the ad people are happy, and you're contributing to the running of whatever site it is you'recurrently on. Which is why Adblock is so dangerous for the thousands of sites that rely on adsto function. As noted here, the amount of people who use ad-blocking software numbersin the tens of millions. That's millions of views and thousands of real, actual dollarsbeing lost every single day. Thousands of dollars that the people who make ads get tokeep. And come on, be honest: who would you rather have the money, the people runningthe site you're on, or the ad people asking you to shoot Dick Cheney's head for the chanceto win an iPhone (some restrictions apply)? But this is the annoying part; the peoplewho use the software are usually technologically-minded, Internet-savvy people. In other words, thepeople who use the Internet the most are more likely to visit smaller, niche sites thatcater to their interests. Sites that then get squeezed due to the combination of moreserver strain and less money. Hey, if you want to block ads, that's entirelyup to you. We can't do anything about it and telling you no to is only going to make youwant to do it more, but at the very least, if you're going to do it, do it on a siteyou hate, and turn it off for sites you like.
4. 80% Of Time Spent Online Is Wasted As we've mentioned above, thousands of hoursare wasted on fruitless arguments, but the figures go way deeper than that. For example,it's believed that 80% of all time spent online while at work is wasted. Now, we're not goingto discuss what this means for the loss of man hours at the various businesses aroundthe globe this effects, because people wasting company time hints more at a problem withhow that company is run, and not the people working there. No, the problem is a little more abstractthan that. We think the part of this figure people should be paying attention to is that,with the entire collected knowledge of mankind at their fingertips, people will overwhelminglychoose to waste it on Facebook games and overdone memes, rather than actually better themselvesthrough education.
3. The Internet Is Killing Spelling Judging by how often you guys correct ourspelling mistakes, we're assuming that you handsome bunch of TopTenz readers are well-versedin how the English language works. We're also pretty sure that if you've ever seen a YouTubevideo comment section, you're aware of how much the language can be twisted beyond recognition,until it's just an amalgamation of unreadable gibberish that slowly starts to resemble thescreaming ghost of Dr. Samuel Johnson the more you look at it. According to a study by the English SpellingSociety (which, yes, is a thing that exists), things like internet chatrooms and socialnetworking sites have made misspelling more socially acceptable, which has in turn mademisspelling more rampant. It's actually so bad that, according to the study, 66% of childrenand teens quizzed felt that the dictionary, the eternal guardian and sentinel of the writtenword, should contain alternate spellings of words. Ya now, becos dat dusnt mayk u lukstewpid @ awll, dus et?
2. Cyberbullying Affects Almost Half Of Teens,And The Cyberbullies Think It's Funny Cyberbullying is a massive issue, and though coverage of particularly harrowing cases would make it seem like it's being cracked down on, the facts state that almost 50% of teens and young people still experience cyberbullyingin some form. Digging deeper only reveals more frustrating figures, like how 20% ofteens have been bullied by someone pretending to be them, because bullies are buttholeslike that. The truly awful part? 81% of young peoplebelieve that cyberbullies bully because they think it's funny. If you don't think there'ssomething awful about an overwhelming majority of young people thinking that their peerswould be willing to emotionally torture someone because it makes them laugh, then you're eitherdead inside or you blacked out during that last sentence. If it's the latter, then youshould have someone take a look at that. It doesn't sound healthy.
1. The Internet Is Destroying How We RememberThings ... We Think We've mentioned several times in this article that the Internet contains a huge amount of knowledge. However, it would seem that thisaccess to almost unlimited information is actually having an adverse affect on how ourmemories function. As noted here in this New York Times article,ubiquitous Internet access has seemingly effected how our memories recall facts and information.Having the ability to Google anything we want to know the answer to has made it so our mindsdon't recall facts, just recall how to find them. And you know what? That's one of the mostdepressing facts of all. We have this wonderful invention with the capability to teach usall so much and improve all of our lives in a massive, tangible way, and we're now sodependent on it that we can't remember anything awesome. Well, that and all the sexism, homophobia,bullying, revenue stealing, and terrible spelling. Other than that, the Internet sure is great, don't you think?
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