Maybe it’s just me, but I Stumble often and I have seen in the last year an increasing number of posts/pictures/movies whatever that are viral. That is, they pop up on so many sites that it is really a huge waste of time for moderate web surfers.

In the StumbleUpon world I am a small fry. There are people who have tens of thousands of recommendations. I wonder how they are able to do this. It is hard imagining that time it would take to accomplish this. Is this their primary net activity? Do they have mobile devices and do it in the car? Are they stumbling at work, because they have little to do? Where do people find that much time? Nevertheless, I see a ton of recycled content. How can a moderate web surfer like myself, see so much randomly and how can it be filtered to make more effective use of Internet stumbling?

StumbleUpon isn’t alone in this. I also notice it in my RSS feed. I have given the contents of my RSS feed in a previous post, and for the most part it is still the same. My first two ways to keep up on the internet are going through the RSS feed which numbers about 600 items on average a day, and then stumbling. I tend to find more interesting and useful information when I stumble, since by the time it appears on the RSS it has already been syndicated at least 2 other times. My thought has always been to showcase stories that I don’t read anywhere else.

It is easy enough to find the stories that people who have an agenda want you to know about. I don’t have an agenda. I share stories that I find interesting, and they often don’t conform to my current opinions. I have seen I have been wrong, and so freely admit that what I currently believe may not be reality. So I try to find information that challenges what I believe. As much as possible, I am open to helpful and life enhancing things in life.

So why am I sharing all this? To show you that often I have to discard 99% of what I see on the Internet. Sometimes I will find something interesting and give it a thumbs up on SU, but decide it isn’t really appropriate for my audience here. So if you like what I have here, you might want to check out the SU feed which you can access by clicking on About Me and choosing the StumbleUpon profile. I guess you could call it the B-side to chimac.net.

So I think that the Internet is just a reflection of society. Lots of garbage, and a few nuggets of wisdom and humor in the mix. Good luck everyone in trying to find those!