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AndrewB

Stupid games your mind plays while surfing the web

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Do you have any annoying mind-games that you play while reading text or doing everyday tasks? You know, pointless little mini-games that create pointless goals that your brain is exhaustingly set on accomplishing. Here are some of mine:

1) When reading multiple paragraphs of text, most commonly found in news articles, I spend minutes trying to align my mouse pointer in such a way that it hovers over text for as many wheel-turns as possible. Sometimes I think about how many times I've been able to scroll to the bottom of the page using my mouse wheel, and all the way back up to the top, without ever hitting whitespace and revealing a normal arrow mouse-pointer.

2) I went through about a year-and-a-half period where I couldn't read fixed-width text (such as e-mails in Courier New) without looking for rivers. I would study the paths of the white spaces between the lines, and see if I could find a path from the top of the message to the bottom. The rules were this: If a space is directly aligned with, or diagonally aligned with a space from one row to the next, that represented a path through a line. This rule would be followed to find a path through multiple paragraphs, and sometimes even the entire message. Sometimes I would try to influence it so the path would be completely blocked in the first two or three lines; sometimes I would try to pave a large series of aligned spaces through a paragraph. It was freaking ridiculous.

3) Sometimes, when typing a reply on a message board such as this, I find my message approaching the default height and width boundaries of the message window. Sometimes I would spend 5-10 minutes trying to figure out how to prevent my message from exceeding that extra line, thereby un-graying the vertical scroll bar.

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Well sometimes I highlight portions of text using either click-and-drag or triple-clicking. Not in any real pattern, it's just kind of a nervous tick.

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Danarchy said:

Well sometimes I highlight portions of text using either click-and-drag or triple-clicking.


I do it all the damn time. can't...stop...

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Danarchy said:

Well sometimes I highlight portions of text using either click-and-drag or triple-clicking. Not in any real pattern, it's just kind of a nervous tick.

Everybody does that.

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I have the strange need to constantly make sure that the cursor (even though there is none when browsing the web) is in the message's window while reading pretty much about anything. I hadn't noticed that until I read AndrewB's post though...

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I have to do the same thind as exile... it is bbzare, becuse if i don't, then i starts to twitch, and i feel all....

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Danarchy said:

Well sometimes I highlight portions of text using either click-and-drag or triple-clicking. Not in any real pattern, it's just kind of a nervous tick.

Yeaaa I got the same damn issue.

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I sometimes do the same as #1, except that I try to see how many wheel turns I get keeping my cursor off the text. Very strange.

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Xaser said:

I sometimes do the same as #1, except that I try to see how many wheel turns I get keeping my cursor off the text. Very strange.

me too!

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AndrewB said:

1) When reading multiple paragraphs of text, most commonly found in news articles, I spend minutes trying to align my mouse pointer in such a way that it hovers over text for as many wheel-turns as possible. Sometimes I think about how many times I've been able to scroll to the bottom of the page using my mouse wheel, and all the way back up to the top, without ever hitting whitespace and revealing a normal arrow mouse-pointer.

I do that too, I play lots of 'games' of the sort with the mouse and cusor and all.

I tend to play a lot of gameish things, on and off the internet. When in a moving vehicle (That I am not driving) I look on the road for the yellow striped lines or little light things that reflect, and I only Blink my eyes or breathe when our vehicle is not overlapping one, and I do this for countless minutes sometimes in to the hours if we are on a long trip.

This isn't really a game, but everytime I hear a tune, usualy what I 'absolutely must do' is tap my fingers/hands/feet to the beat of it and get it perfect, if I mess up the beat my arms and hands start to feel like they are aboot to rip out of my skin and I get an isolated feeling like I am aboot to snap my arms until I get the beat perfect and it sounds perfect to me.

A 'game' I often play is where my mind argues with itself. My left side argues that my right side is not doing things right then they argue for minutes on end.
R:"Man you're stupid."
L:"You're the same guy as me!"
R:"No I'm not."
L:"Yes you are! We are both in the same person!"
R:"Umm, no."
L:"Ughh, yes we are."
R:"Ooh, look at me I'm Mr.Know-everything!"
L:"What do you mean? You know we are both in the same person."
R:"Umm..Duh."
L:"You just said we weren't!"
R:"We're in the same person, idiot."
L:"I Just told you that!"
R:"Sure, whatever."
L:"Ughhhh..."
R:"Man, you're stupid."
L:"Hey! You're the same as me just the other side!"
R:" 'You're the same..'Yuk yuk yuk."
L:"Do you want to be hurt?"
R:"Oh just try me lefty."
L:"Oh, I will."
R:"Oh, come on, we are the same guy, you can't hit me without commanding Him to move you over to me, HAH!"
L:"Yeah, but I can still argue you to numbness."
R:"..........Silence..."
L:"Hah, that is what I thought, always shutting up when wrong."
R:"YOU'RE wrong!"
L:"Oooh, Nice."
R:"Go away."
L:"Meh."
R:"...Alright, lets just call a truce alright? We are the same, done?"
L:"Done."
That was one of them, that I remember. :D Those silly left and right sides of me.
I do a lot of things that I think are odd but its fun. :D
Now I kind of feel I am not so odd in that way. :D

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Xaser said:

I sometimes do the same as #1, except that I try to see how many wheel turns I get keeping my cursor off the text. Very strange.

Actually, I do this too. I do it both ways.

fraggle said:

I highlight paragraphs of text such that exactly half of the paragraph is highlighted.

That's another one that I do but forgot to mention.

DOOM Anomaly said:

R:"Man you're stupid."
L:"You're the same guy as me!"
R:"No I'm not."
L:"Yes you are! We are both in the same person!"
R:"Umm, no."
L:"Ughh, yes we are."
R:"Ooh, look at me I'm Mr.Know-everything!"
L:"What do you mean? You know we are both in the same person."
R:"Umm..Duh."
L:"You just said we weren't!"
R:"We're in the same person, idiot."
L:"I Just told you that!"
R:"Sure, whatever."
L:"Ughhhh..."
R:"Man, you're stupid."
L:"Hey! You're the same as me just the other side!"
R:" 'You're the same..'Yuk yuk yuk."
L:"Do you want to be hurt?"
R:"Oh just try me lefty."
L:"Oh, I will."
R:"Oh, come on, we are the same guy, you can't hit me without commanding Him to move you over to me, HAH!"
L:"Yeah, but I can still argue you to numbness."
R:"..........Silence..."
L:"Hah, that is what I thought, always shutting up when wrong."
R:"YOU'RE wrong!"
L:"Oooh, Nice."
R:"Go away."
L:"Meh."
R:"...Alright, lets just call a truce alright? We are the same, done?"
L:"Done."

I hate Right... He's such an ________.

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Heh. You all have Obbsessive Compulsive Disorder. Me too! Anyway, I do a lot of this stuff. Sometimes when I'm really bored, my mind will go off in a train of thought and I'll end up somewhere completley different than what I was originally thinking about, and then I'll go like "Whoa! Weird!"

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I highlight the entire page looking for words blended perfectly into the background. I especially do this with text on white or black backgrounds and spaces that look like they might contain colored-out words.

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Meh, I do none of this.
although I may click the right mouse button if I am using an unfamiliar mouse... yay for Tourettes Syndrome

fuck shit

damn damn


shit
fuck

cock


apple

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Fredrik said:

Everybody does that.



Well, at least many people do it...

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I usually make sure the mouse cursor isn't in the part you have to type in when I'm surfing forums. It doesn't make sense.

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I'm constantly clicking on whatever window I'm working in to make sure it's selected. And whenever I'm typing text, I'm always hitting the delete key to make sure I haven't added any extra spaces or newlines. I've done it about four times so far in this paragraph. Five now. Six.

Oh, and I dislike my mouse cursor over text or text boxes. Seven. Eight.

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Just like most of you, Im always selecting text when im reading, watching or just looking at something. No pattern in it, just randomly click drag and select some portions. I have no clue why.

When Im in an editor, any editor, I keep pressing CTRL+S like 52 times after I made a small change, like typing a line or drawing a square, whatever the editor is meant for. Just to make sure its saved.

Theres a few more that I cant think of atm.

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CodeImp said:

When Im in an editor, any editor, I keep pressing CTRL+S like 52 times after I made a small change, like typing a line or drawing a square, whatever the editor is meant for. Just to make sure its saved.

Twenty years of personal computing and this problem still hasn't been fixed on the application level.

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I mostly just highlight text randomly. Though sometimes I like to highlight the last two rows of a paragraph so that the highlights meet just a little bit at where the last row ends. =P

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Other one I tend to do is when I click on links, I always click off of them so that they are not selected, as if I am trying to fool someone as to what link I am going to, most likely one of the sides. :D

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And whenever I'm typing text, I'm always hitting the delete key to make sure I haven't added any extra spaces or newlines.

Heh heh, me too.

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Maybe the reasons in here are what's causing RSI and crap like that. :)

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