At 10 AM I had my morning cup of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal, read the day’s news on CNN.com, and decided that I would write a post for collegecandy.com about the best websites for procrastinating.

Cut to eight hours later: I’ve clocked about four hours of Internet browsing time and haven’t gotten any of my post for College Candy done. This is because I am an expert on using the web to waste copious amounts of time.

Here’s how I do it.

My top 5 websites for wasting time:

1. Wikipedia
I spent the summer after my junior year at Emerson working as a receptionist at a post-production office in Los Angeles. We rarely had guests and the phone only rang a few times a day, so aside from picking up people’s lunches I didn’t have much to do. Instead of doing what I should have done (using the time to write a novel or a screenplay or whatever) I decided to learn all human knowledge on Wikipedia.org. I would spend hours clicking on “Random article” again and again. I am now a master at Trivial Pursuit.

2. Facebook
This one is pretty obvious but I feel it deserves to be at the top of my list since I waste so much time on it everyday. I obsessively check Facebook. I’m not exactly sure why. I get just a handful of notices every day about new friends or events, and I don’t actually spend that much time reading other people’s profiles, but it’s the News Feed that sucks me in. I’m not sure what I’m waiting to read, but I find myself checking it again and again, just in case some crazy shit in the life of a friend went down. Read More »

Putting aside the very hairy area of cheating in relationships, I’m wondering about academic cheating. Before college, I attended a very small, liberal all-girls school where everyone knew everyone else and we were all trained to be as “honorable” as could be. We all had to re-sign an extensive honor code each year, and there were serious penalties for violating it.

I remember in my senior year of high school, one girl was found to have plagiarized part of a paper from the internet. Not only was she suspended; she had to deliver a speech in front of the entire class, explaining why plagiarism was wrong.

Princeton has been particularly aggressive on the cheating front in the same way. We have honor code meetings, have to write a page on matriculation illustrating our understanding of it, and get regular updates from the honor committee. All the same, when I arrived there I discovered whole new layers of gray areas.

In problem set classes, for example, there are plenty of people who like to work in study groups. That’s all well and good, except when “study groups” turn into “let’s just copy the answers off each other.” I thought that kind of behavior was only in the occasional math class, but I was surprised to learn that it’s much more prevalent in college. When all that matters for your future career is that good grade in an Orgo class, it can be extremely tempting just to write down the process and answer of your friends, whether you understand it or not, and worry about the final exam later. Read More »

As if we weren’t oversharing enough these days, the interwebs have taken it one step further.

Yes, ladies, in addition to showing everyone how well you can shotgun a beer, who you took to that last date party and what you are doing at every. possible. second., now you can tell everyone what you are wearing too!

Weardrobe.com, “your online fashion closet,” is a new site where you can show the world everything in your closet! Because we care! Because I sit at my computer wondering just what some random girl in California (with a much larger budget than me, I might add) is wearing to the beach on Sunday. Because I need to see a collection of photos of girls in giant sunglasses.

The main premise of the site is to “build” your online wardrobe, but I just don’t get it. You are not even building it with real things. It would be one thing to add photographs of the stuff you actually own, but this site just has you choose from random icons to throw in your fake closet. Like Louboutins and Prada slides.

Then, your friends are supposed to help you create an outfit. With icons! WTF? This is like the Sims meets Neiman Marcus. Read More »

So, I was out at the bar with some coworkers last week, and a guy started talking about “The New Facebook.”

“There’s a ‘new’ Facebook?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Is it bad that I want to go home right now just to try it out?”

“Definitely,” I responded. “Stay here and get drunk. New Facebook will be waiting when the bar closes.”

Facebook has had quite the impact on American pop culture. I mean, really? This guy wanted to leave the bar to try it!? Whenever there’s even a minimal change in the layout and operation of the social network, it causes an uproar.

Remember when mini-feed first popped up? Immediately, groups sprouted all over the internet:
“Down with Mini-Feed!”
“Boycott F/B if They Don’t Get Rid of Mini-Feed Immediately!”
“Facebook Makes Stalking Easier with Mini-Feed!”

You get the point. Of course, now we’re all used to the program, and many of us keep updated via mini-feed every day: “Hey, I saw on Mini-Feed that you got a new job, congratulations!”

So, even though I’m hesitant to add too many applications (I don’t like that we have to check a box giving the ‘application’ full access to the info in our profiles), and even though I’m fully content keeping tabs on my friends the “old way,” I decided to check out the hullabaloo that is The New Facebook. Read More »

Who couldn’t use a quick buck these days? Especially college students who can barely scrape together a couple of quarters for 50-cent beer night at the pub. Sure, we have financial aid, work study, and minimum-wage paying part-time jobs, but sometimes we just need a little extra cash, stat. Thanks to Craigslist, that cash isn’t so hard to come by.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Craigslist, there is an individual site for most major cities across the US (and around the world, for that matter), e.g. losangeles.craigslist.org, boston.craigslist.org, and so on. Craigslist is basically a bunch of classified ads, and there’s a huge section of both “jobs” and “gigs” just waiting for you to stumble upon. So whether you want to splurge on a shopping spree, get your grandmother a birthday present, or actually buy your books this semester, look on Craigslist. I recommend browsing the categories “ETC” and “Event,” though if you have a particular talent or skill, you may want to look under “Creative,” “Labor,” or “Writing.”

Here are some of my favorite past Craigslist gigs:

1. Mock Juror
Listed under: Event
Paid: $60 for less than 4 hours Read More »

Seriously, who gives out their number anymore?

I remember having a drunken bonding moment with a really cool guy in college a few years ago, and he asked for my number. I asked for his screen name instead. I mean, IM-ing someone is so much more casual, and so much less stressful. You don’t have to feel your heart thumping through your chest as the phone rings. Is he going to answer? Is it going to go to voicemail? Is he blocking me? What do I say if he picks up?

With IM, you can see if he’s away or idle, and choose your own adventure from there. You can leave a casual “Just wanted to say I had a great time last night” IM, rather than starting a phone call with the same line and then struggling to make small talk. Likewise, you can make small talk behind the shield of the IM window, where he can’t hear your voice crack, and where you can copy and paste the whole convo to all of your girlfriends and get advice while you try to weed out his intentions.

And then came Facebook. The social network has made quite the mark on the dating scene. There’s the poke, which can be viewed as casual, flirty, or creepy. There’s the “it’s complicated” label for the relationship you’re in (finally- you can be open about having a f*ck buddy without warding off the rest of the male population!); and of course, there’s the wall post, which makes the casual IM seem like the awkward phone call of yesteryear. Read More »

Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m paranoid. Seriously. I look over my shoulder when I walk home at night. I don’t accept phone calls from numbers I don’t know. It’s not a fear thing; it’s more irritation that I can be tracked down.

Which is why I am fascinated by all the little internet thingies that claim to be able to find personal information (location, phone number, etc.) if you only just plug in the name. I mean, are they accurate? Are some better than others?

I tried to use some of them to track down an old friend, but given that old friend’s name is Jen Jones, I had way too many results with no real way to tell if I was getting the right person.

So I decided to test some of them with my own name (I mean, I know my own information, right? I hope?) and here are the results:

Intelius People Search

There were a LOT of possible me’s, but, voila! There I was, nestled in between my name dopplegangers, there for the world to see. It even listed my correct age (and my middle initial!). However, they made a little mistake–I’m listed as living in my hometown, where I haven’t lived for over 6 years and definitely haven’t been registered at for almost 3. Still, pretty impressive. Read More »

I don’t know what it is about today, but somehow we have come across some seriously gross sh*t on the internet. Maybe we have too much time on our hands? Or maybe Tuesdays are just unlucky. Whatever the reason, we can’t keep it to ourselves. It’s just too….gross.

We know you are all out there taking a break from the summer classes/laying by the pool/that awful summer job and you need soemthing to do. So, here it is.

Click with caution. Oh, and learn from our mistakes: put down the snack foods, ladies. Somehow that Oreo Cakester just isn’t as tasty when accompanied by incest, moose knuckles and old lady hoo-hahs.

Which is worse: sex with your brother or sex with someone who looks exactly like your daughter? Read More »

Ok, so basically, this Brinkley/Cook divorce thing is your typical Hollywood story. Two famous people are happy until one decides he’d like to have sex with 18-year-old girls. Only in America! Apparently now (according to the Today Show, really scraping that barrel) it’s come out that Cook also enjoyed his porn. And not just ‘Oh lemme see some 30 second clips‘ enjoyed. We’re talking $3,000 a month in subscription fees. He really, really likes porno.

The frustrating thing about the Today Show piece is that they were calling the segment ‘Cyber Cheating,’ and while, surely, Cook cheated, and indeed he didn’t just look at porn but also used (apparently, its hard to tell with all the ambiguous language) ’sex’ sites, which we assume are swinger hubs, porn shouldn’t really be considered cheating. Granted, three grand worth of porn is divorce worthy, based on irresponsible money management and creepy factor alone, but looking at porn isn’t cheating. And if it is, every guy with a connection to the Internet is cheating. Half of them are cheating right now!

Is cybersex cheating? Arguable, but we can lean toward yes. Cybersex and ‘cyber-flirting,’ while physically harmless, reveal that you aren’t getting something from the relationship you’re in. Read More »

Good news, everyone! Now you can rank prostitutes online! (Editor’s Note: YES! It is all I ever wanted!)

At The Erotic View, men can chat about hoohas for pay, and the adorably nicknamed “Net Walkers” (get it? Like night walkers? GET IT??) can make those very same hoohas known.

In other words, this is basically a review system for prostitutes. Men rank women on many aspects of their appearance and services. They can also chat on message boards, detailing how good the prostitute was and what she will and won’t do. To access many of these message boards (supposedly not for the faint of heart), you have to become a VIP, which seems to involve writing a certain number of reviews. Think of these prolific men as film critics…except instead of film, they’re reviewing sex-for-hire. And lady parts. Read More »