Sitting in the English building waiting for my Italian lesson to start, a college student sits down. She opens her laptop up and goes straight to the internet. Being the eavesdropping individual that I am, I decided I should extend that quality to view what she was doing on her laptop. I mean, what else was I supposed to do?
She had several tabs open. From the Compass (UIUC online center) to her Flickr stream. All the while she was constantly chatting with her friend on iChat and searching for, "yummy cookies" on Google and reading about the Wisconsin Union situation. Soon, she read a Jane Austen novel online and finished her session with a quick stop at her mother's Facebook page to wish her a happy birthday.
I never realized how much you can learn about someone just from seeing their "tabs". A brief look at my browser will yield a fairly accurate conclusion of my personality. First tab-Bloomingdales Sale. Actually, about 25% of my tabs were related to clothing, from Gilt Groupe to Nordstrom. Not to worry, Socially Conscious Individual! In addition to there materialistic indulgences were: The New York Times, Fox News (Fair and Balanced!), Bloomberg.com, and The Huffington Post. Rounding out this "electronic template of Rohit Palekar" were tabs leading to Goop.com (for more cookie recipes) and 30 Rock on Hulu.
An admirer of my browser can gather that I obviously enjoy idling at online boutiques. Not only a true consumer, I crave current events almost as much as I crave television and baked treats. Though our personalities are obviously deeper than what our internet browser tabs display, they represent who we are on a surface level and serve as the launching point of more to come.
A very interesting and so-you post. Your abilities to observe(or search ;)) things about people never fail to amaze me.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing not only how much can be learned about a person from the tabs they have open, but also how many they can focus on at once. When I'm programming, or reading the news, I often have 15 to 20 tabs open. I've gotten in the habit of opening every new page in a tab, and almost never using the back button.
ReplyDeleteThis is a wonderfully written post yet again! I agree with Jack, a person's life can be superficially summarized by the tabs they've opened. In fact, I can see from my tabs now what kind of life I have.
ReplyDeleteYou are a one-of-a-kind eavesdropper with great potential! Keep it up!
It so easy to eavesdrop on people with all the different technologies out there - I always seem to 'accidentally' overhear cell phone conversations while walking on campus, and it's such an interesting way of learning about people.
ReplyDeleteLooking at people's tabs is always quite entertaining. Personally, I always have around ten tabs open at any given time. It's extremely convenient since whenever I'm browsing through Facebook or Gmail chat and my parents are around, I can just switch tabs to my calculus homework page or something. My parents haven't discovered the miracle of tabs yet. ;)
ReplyDeleteHaha, too true. I tend to have a few tabs on games and/or forums always open. I don't do that in class, though *shifty eyes* I hope you were joking about the Fox News part...
ReplyDeleteI'm the only person I know who uses tabs, and I use them only when I'm looking up something to make sure that a forum (or blog...) post I'm making is correct, or to check a guide for a computer game, or something.
ReplyDeleteAlso, eavesdropping is bad.
good post rohit! i never really thought about tabs as a way to learn about someone, but your explanation makes sense. my tabs arent nearly as interseting as most peoples, though-- basically sports stuff, email, facebook, and music stuff. using multiple windows is something else i do when i want to hide what i am doing from nosy parents
ReplyDeleteI almost never use tabs so I doubt you would ever learn anything about me if you eavesdropped.
ReplyDeleteWhat I think makes this post interesting is that everyone is looking for ways to identify themselves and I think it's cool that you can connect so many of your likes/dislikes, traits, and habits to something as ordinary as tabs.
Compelling opening! It's so easy to know what everyone's doing at Grainger Library, so I make sure that I have no embarrassing tabs open when other people are around me. I can relate; I love reading current events and news, if only to procrastinate on my calculus homework. On a side note, it irritates me when websites have pop-ups instead of tabs (such as Google Docs sometimes).
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you get your news from a variety of sources. Good call.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what you would call what you were doing here. Tabsdropping? Laptopdropping? (No, that's when you drop your laptop.) I think I might have to go with tabsdropping, unless something better emerges...
I told you this yesterday, but I used to be a back button person! And now that I have converted, my life is so much easier. Who knew how easy facebook creeping would become with the "open link in new tab" option! I certainly never considered the possibilities.
ReplyDeleteI would like to say that this post inspired me to become the tab-fiend that I am today (though still, my 6 is nothing to your 20). However, I came to this tabs realization quite awhile ago.
Great post, and keep up the good work, you socially conscious individual, you!