Damn you, Wikipedia
It sounds crazy, but the task of looking up the name of someone in a movie or the date of an event invariably turns into a multi-hour info-orgy of doom when Wikipedia is involved. I looked up the name of the narrator on Mythbusters last night and ended up spending two and a half hours reading about the Soviet exploration of Mars. How are the two related? You tell me! I usually start out with a simple question, which is usually pretty easy to answer with Wikipedia, but without fail somewhere on the page with the answer I see a shiny new link to something I’m interested (or think I’m interested) in. “I’ll open it in a tab and get to it when I finish the current page,” I say to myself, but then there’ll be another link, and another and another until I end up with 14 tabs open at 11:00 at night.
Yep, this happens to the best of us. Similar: IMDb.com. I’ll go to look up an actress name, follow a movie link in her list, and a half hour later I’m six degrees across the movie star network.
I hesitiate to blame Wiki, though. I usually average about 15+ open tabs from a random, seemingly innocent Wiki search. I believe it has more to do with my own imprudent curiousity, which has gotten me in much trouble, lo these many years.