The interweb is often a very serious place, full of very serious content. At the same time it's also a dazzlingly good source of silliness, everything from ill-advised domain names to businesses whose owners maybe should've thought twice when naming them, and products nobody in their right mind would buy. Here are ten of the most pointless, least useful bits of online content from the past 12 months, carefully selected for your delectation. Happy time-wasting!
The oddly compelling Catbounce
Everyone loves cat content. Even if you don't like cats, you probably love it. Here's something pawesome for you... and we don't expect you to forgive the pun. It was indeed dreadful. Follow this link to catbounce, where you'll find lots of little cats bouncing around on the screen. It's meaningless... yet strangely compelling.
Twitter genius - An Italian butcher gets to grips with GDPR
When @Keonfucious spotted this GDPR statement he couldn't resist tweeting it: “ATTENZIONE! Nella nostra macelleria, alcune volte potremmo chiedere il vostro nome & ricordarci, le vostre preferenze in fatto di carni. Se la cosa e per voi molesta, vi preghiano di entrare gridando “nego il consenso!”
Apparently it means: WARNING. In our butcher's shop we might ask your name and remember your meat-related preferences. If you are worried about this, please enter the shop while shouting 'I DO NOT AGREE!', and we will henceforth pretend we do not know you."
The perfectly pointless endless horse
It's a drawing of a horse. It isn't even a very good drawing of a horse. But it is endless. Scroll down the screen and the horse's legs go on and on and on... and on. Perfectly pointless and utterly useless, it is also very hard to resist. You can play with the endless horse here.
The 'women laughing alone at salad' meme gets real
You know the internet meme, women laughing alone at salad? It's hilarious. Now it's gone offline, entering the real world and being harnessed to explore “gender stereotypes, relationships, and sexism, with a healthy side of humor and mixed greens.” By all accounts Women Laughing Alone At Salad, a play written by Shiela Callaghan, “breaks all the rules of our image-obsessed culture in this raw, feminist comedy where everyone is about to get tossed!”
Arse or elbow?
Do you know your ass from your elbow? Here's a fun game for you, courtesy of Dr Dilligaf. All you do is examine each image carefully with your expert eye and decide whether it is an arse or an elbow. A great way to waste valuable time.
The top 3 worst-thought-through domain names
Choosing a domain name? You need to make it short, smart, memorable, easy to remember and relevant to your business. It shouldn't be that much of a challenge, but plenty of us make a meal of it. Power to the people who dreamed up the domain names MP3shits.com, powergenitalia.com and speedofart.com. You are brilliant, and we salute you.
If you'd like to avoid being awarded a place on the top worst domain names list, by the way, you can do so at the Word Safety website. Just plumb in the domain name you're thinking about and it'll reveal whether it's rude or otherwise inadvisable in another language.
The World Record egg meme
In early 2019 someone decided they wanted to make their Instagram account more popular than all-time Instagram queen Kylie Jenner's. They did it with an egg, which smashed the competition by gathering over ten million followers and almost 53 million faves. It really is just a photo of an egg, which just goes to show how very unpredictable and eccentric our online lives really are. You've got to love the egg. Here it is.
Punny business names on Pinterest
The Codfather. Doggy Fashion. British Hairways. We Brits love a good pun, and we love a bad pun even more. Follow this link to Pinterest, where you'll find a feast of gloriously daft British business names, everything from Bread Pitt to Pain in the Glass.
Australia's 2019 baby names ban
Here in the UK you can call your baby anything you like: Tank Top, Ergot, Ninja, Spiral Staircase, Nostril, whatever. In Australia the government publishes an annual banned baby name list, presumably to prevent emotional trauma as the children grow older only to find their playmates mercilessly ripping the proverbial out of them. The best banned baby names for 2019, as featured on the Aussie website Practical Parenting, are Diesel, Armani, Chlamydia (!), Lettuce, Champagne, Sparkle, and Magic. None of them, however, beat a couple of our personal favourite children's names, both real life examples - 'Guvnor' and 'Princessing'. Awesome.
Staggeringly beautiful or well weird?
Bored? Have a go at this staggeringly simple yet ridiculously entertaining thingummybob. It's an eel-like creature with two eyes that jiggles and waves as you move your mouse, and goes totally psychedelic when you move the mouse 'vigorously'. A brilliant way to while away time when you're bored and restless.
What online wonders will the next twelve months bring? Only one thing is certain – they will be weird.