It happened again today. I was trying to write an article when my little GAIM beep went off, and I got a message from a good friend with a YouTube link in it. It was a four minute video, and quite funny. After I watched it I went back to work. But two minutes later I got the GAIM beep again.

This time it was a Lulu.tv link — a totally cool little video intro to the Church of the SubGenius. We all need more Slack, right?

But do we really need to watch another 10 SubGenius videos like this one at Google Video?

Anyway, two hours later I was ready to work on my article again after I checked my email, but there was an email from my friend Mongog with a link to yet another video, so…

Stop this nonsense immediately!

Was that my conscience yelling at me? Or was I having a flashback to a 1999 article about how Flash is Evil? This requires some thought.

(one hour later)

I’ve now spent over three hours watching and thinking about online video. The article I’m supposed to be working on is still only half done. I really need to get back to it. But first, it’s time for me to check Slashdot.

(two hours later)

Hah! Finally got that article written. It only took me an hour to finish it — after I spent an hour cruising Slashdot comments.

Slashdot has long been considered one of the Internet’s greatest time-wasters and productivity-destroyers. But video — on YouTube and elsewhere — can be three, four or even 10 times worse than Slashdot has ever been.

Case in point: I just took a five minute break between the last paragraph and this one to view a video called Cosby BeBop that was pointed out by a programmer who works on Slashdot.

What about outsourcing?

The spread of Internet video clips is obviously hurting programmers’ (and writers’) productivity more than Slashdot ever did. Each clip may only be couple of minutes long, but if you watch all videos friends send you links for, before you know it half your working day is gone.

The solution is obvious: Offshore outsourcing.

I’m not talking about the programming (and writing) work. We need to keep that here in the U.S. if we want to keep our jobs. I mean the video watching, which can be done just as well in China, India or Vietnam as here in the U.S., and at a far lower hourly rate.

And if offshoring our video watching improves our productivity as much as I think it will, the next step is obvious: Offshore Slashdot, too, along with Digg, Reddit, and all the other sites that help geeks find articles and other online material that takes up the time they should spend working.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 at 7:50 pm and is filed under Humor, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.