8 hour web vortex

I never thought I was a person who could bear spending my entire day not just on my computer, but on the web. But the advent of web 2.0 social networking, satellite tv, and unemployment has made the whole thing all too easy. Let me explain:

I wake up, and start my job search. The web is my best resource, and also the bane of my existence. The brass ring of monster.com, craigslist.com, linkedin.com, is only made bearable with the pablum droning of Law and Order on tv. If you have satellite, digital, cable or whatever access to extended channels of tv, then L&O is available at pretty much some time of the day, in various states of syndication, on various channels. The only time it is not on, at least with DirecTV, is 1-2pm, which is when I eat breakfast.

I troll the listings on Craigslist in various cities, I play with the search settings on Monster.com, I stalk all my more successful fellow fancy-school alums on LinkedIn. Ohh, LinkedIn. It combines the promise of a job with the supposed pleasures of webstalking-- oops, I mean social networking.

Maybe LinkedIn has helped other peoples careers, but I still suspect we're not meant to apply social networking to useful or practical aims. Which calls into questions the coming heyday of Yelp.com, which is already indispensable in San Francisco. My friends' don't even order pizza without consulting fellow "yelpers" online. Yelp, if you don't know it, is a user-generated content, social network approach to the yellowpages. Need a recommendation for a barber in your 'hood? Yelpers will lead your way, and you can even find the members whose style you like and whose judgment you trust, and you can be their online friend, and peace will at last come to the world.

If only Yelpers could review, or "yelp" the job market, and through the "yelping" of the "yelpers," they could tell me if that full-time, year-long, unpaid internship to ship shipping supplies is worth 0 stars or 1 stars.

The most intuitive next step in my life has been, of course, to join Yelp, and start reviewing the sad little restaurants in my town where I will be spending mucho time with my parents after long and unending strings of days spent in front of my computer.

There is still the same old question with social networking: Does it make my life better, richer? Seeing as how I have yet to find a job, the answer is, quite literally, no.