by Adedayo Ademuwagun

Students at the University of Pennsylvania will be taking a new course this year about wasting time on the internet. That’s right. Wasting time on the internet.

Part of the coursework will require the students to stare at the computer screen for hours and interact solely through the chatrooms and social media. The students have been assured that aimless drifting is mandatory.

Taking a course about wasting time on the internet is probably a waste of time, but it’s not the only way you could waste your time. Besides, wasting time is perhaps not always a bad thing, because sometimes you simply have free time to spend in between classes or after the day’s work. So if you’re in Nigeria and you have some free time, here are nine things you could do to waste it all online this year.

1. Look at Maheeda’s pictures (or whoever will be posting erotic pictures this year)

Bloggers love to publish erotic photos of famous people trying to “break the internet”, because that sort of thing drives traffic. Anything sexual drives traffic. So the bloggers get the clicks because people want to see Maheeda’s boobs or Tiwa Savage twerking on a random fan or Flavour baring his chest. So if you have free time to burn, take a gander.

2. Read about beefs.

Seriously, by now everyone knows that reading about celebrity beefs is a waste of everyone’s time. Everyone except the people fighting.

Firstly, the people having a beef and what they’re having a beef about doesn’t concern us or contribute to our life in any meaningful way. Secondly, they’re probably just going to hug and have a beer together again within a short time, if they aren’t already doing so secretly. Thirdly, they get to benefit from the publicity that the fight generates and they stay relevant in the news. It’s simply amazing how some fans keenly talk about and follow celebrity beefs like they’re going get to get paid for it.

3. Argue about politics

How many hours did we spend last year arguing about Jonathan or APC or some other political issue? Did we gain anything?

Arguing about politics is one of the most time-wasting things to do on the internet in this country. Let’s face it. Those arguments simply lead nowhere. They’re often very pointless and deficient. Anyhow, this story is about how to waste your time online.

4. Read your Facebook and Twitter timeline fervently

Some people constantly check their Facebook or Twitter to see if they can get any useful information from the updates their friends are posting. But we all know that hardly anyone is sharing useful information these days on Facebook or Twitter. People talk mostly about themselves. Most times they just vent about how terrible the government is or how they’re going to puke or some thousand other things that are totally irrelevant to our life. But who says reading about irrelevant things is not a great way to waste time on the internet?

5. Watch Dorobucci or Johnny (or whatever song people rave about this year)

Last year Dorobucci got over 4 million views on YouTube while Yemi Alade’s Johnny got more than 11 million views. Doing the maths, it means we spent about 1 million hours last year watching these two fun videos alone.

Imagine how many millions of hours we wasted last year watching music videos online and what we could have accomplished if we collectively spent that time collaborating on something productive. But the truth is, to imagine that is probably even a waste of time.

6. Keep up with the news daily.

Everyday, news websites throw us links to stories that we probably don’t need to read. But we read them anyway because we want to while away the time and keep up with the news. But mostly we do it to pass the time because when we click the links, we often don’t really read the stories with much interest. We just skim through. Never mind we don’t really digest 95% of the news we read online. They’re not useful to us anyway.

7. Read pointless stories about how to waste your time online.

Okay, what are you doing right now?

8. Write a blog post about change.

If people just took 1% of the time they spent writing about change and spent it on actually changing something, this country would be a million times better than it is right now. But it’s easier to write about change than to actually change something, and if you’re like most people, you’re probably sick of reading about change already.

9. Follow some very silly competitions

Okay, does anyone remember that Doro Mega Super Star graphic design competition from last year?

That’s the end of the discussion.