You might be a little surprised by the website I spend the majority of my own time on. Believe it or not, it is not a social media channel nor is it ESPN.com. For all those academic brainiacs out there, you probably won’t like what I am about to praise as my favorite site to waste 45 minutes on.

When it comes to satisfying my curiosity or checking something of importance, I turn to Wikipedia.

Sorry if that made you vomit. I can’t lie to you though, I love Wikipedia. Six years removed from writing my last academic paper, you don’t have to worry about me using it as an official source or a God-given fact. Rather, I just use it to look up random information. I might use it to read up on a television show of my youth. I will pull it up to learn about a restaurant chain. I will refer to it for a quick summary on a historical event. I use it to read movie plots. If I am ever daydreaming and a question pops into my head, chances are I am searching Wikipedia.

This afternoon I went to a local Subway by myself for lunch. I got my sandwich and sat down inside the restaurant. I took out my phone and perused Wikipedia the whole time. The funny and addicting thing about Wikipedia is you can start on one article and then jump around to a variety of other articles. For example, today at lunch I read about Pringles and that article led me to Chex Mix which led me to Chex Cereal which led me to Kix which led me to Trix which finally landed me at Bugs Bunny (apparently the Trix rabbit once appeared with Bugs Bunny). I pretty much went on a carousel of random snack and cereal trivia. Little did I know when I went to work today I would come home with the knowledge that the Trix pieces became brighter in 1991 and then again in 1995. Talk about an educational lunch!

Wikipedia is great because it is easy reading. The information is laid out in bold sections and the literature is written in a clear and basic way. My main struggle is to finish an article rather than click on a blue highlighted word that will take me to another article. This weekend I was reading about Major League ballparks and I was on Kauffman Stadium. I was going right along when I saw the the word “AstroTurf” highlighted in blue. I just had to click on it.

I know a couple people who consume YouTube like I do Wikipedia. They jump from one video to the next, never thinking about stopping, satisfying themselves with mindless internet entertainment. I get their addiction and they get mine. The only difference is that I don’t do videos, I just do the text.

My goal is to one day have a Wikipedia page about me! Of course it would contain my blog address, my different degrees of weirdness, and a “controversies” section. Until that happens, I will just continue to read about snack foods and ballparks. Don’t Blink.