I can see you are unfamiliar with YouTube. The videos you describe sound absolutely pleasant and worthwhile, compared to the actual YouTube content.

Go watch YouTube's biggest star with the largest channel -- PewDiePie. More than 15,000,000 subscribers. Obnoxious, screeching, loud, inane Swede who calls his fans "bros" and the collective the "bro army" and pulls in something like $6,000,000 USD

This looks to be one of his most recent videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqpECat4whU

This is his *own* compilation of some of his "funniest" moments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRyPjRrjS34

Basically, his "thing" is talking like he's mentally retarded, screaming at the top of his lungs for 80% of the video, and using "rape" as a nearly constant element of "comedy" (he even wrote a song called "It's Raping Time" on one of his videos).

Then there is the girl who is a millionaire from doing "makeup tutorials" and the girls who do "my haul" videos that are ridiculously popular and earn a ton of money (these are videos where they go to the mall, do some shopping, come home, and show you what they bought).

Here's another guy who is in the top 10 or 20 of all Youtube "stars" and also earns millions of dollars for it "Smosh": http://youtu.be/yFGBjXqwzbw

Here's another dude who makes something like $5,000,000 -- and all he does is show other people's videos while commenting over them: http://youtu.be/MS8Dbvv5qss

AnnoyingOrange makes millions, too. It's an orange with a talking mouth superimposed over it. It's the most idiotic "humor" ever. It makes Larry The Cable Guy look legitimate: http://youtu.be/EDKjywzRidI

This "Tobuscus" guy makes a couple million dollars and is in the top 10-20: http://youtu.be/omGX5bleG8g

Jenna Marbles is somewhere around #3 and makes around $5,000,000: http://youtu.be/FCichOcSqz0

This Joey Graceffa guy just wanders around blabbering non-stop while recording it and does something like $200k: http://youtu.be/HH74qrfbuP0

Access to an endless library of Netflix content for $8/mo, but bandwidth will cost you $10/gig. Enjoy!

Exactly. I can get access to more music than I'll ever care about for $5 with RDIO, and a ridiculous amount of content for $8 with Netflix. It isn't all-encompassing, but for $13 in total, it's hard to beat. And $5 for access to all the music is a hell of a lot better than the time you'd spend acquiring music from alternative sources. Same for the television shows and movie content, for that matter. When you make enough stuff available in an easy enough and accessible enough way for cheap enough, it no longer becomes beneficial for someone to skirt methods requiring payment. Go back to charging people $30 for one movie and it all goes out the window again.

I wonder how much of the "ending up in the hospital" part of drug abuse comes from the way society demonizes intoxicants. If you think of the really destructive drugs, like meth or crack, you'll find that most people start out going for these substances because there aren't better substances available to them. There's a lot of data showing that someone can use heroin daily and still be a productive, safe member of society. The problems come from forcing them into back alleys to buy their drug and keeping clean needles away from them.

As I said, I don't use intoxicants. But when you scratch the surface of the drug problem, you find all sorts of paradoxical thinking and misunderstanding. And it's all wrapped up in moralism to make it all even more complicated.

As you say, preventive measures are the best, but demonization of addicts and addiction and intoxicants generally (except alcohol) is standing in the way of us taking a sensible approach to prevention. People have been getting intoxicated on something or other for as long as people have been around. I'm sure Neanderthals got intoxicated. There are better solutions to the ones who become a problem than locking them up in jail, because incarceration is more expensive than just giving them their drugs and a safe place to do them.

You're hitting some unrelated topics. "Binge drinking" is not addiction. It's stupid behavior. I'm not sure I want society to prevent stupid behavior by putting strictures on substances that most people use without being stupid about it.

Escaping reality never makes people stronger.

Hold on a minute. I'm pretty sure you're making a big assumption there. What is "stronger"? Do you mean, "better able to work for a living"? Or do you mean, "more likely to have successful family lives"? Or do you mean, "conforming to societal norms". There are simply too many unknowns in the term "reality" and the term "strong".

And this "reality" you speak of... Are you sure you know what it is? You have a construct inside your mind that you call "reality", but it's only as real as the consensus. I could make a case that spending time reading Slashdot is "escaping reality", or that being involved in religion is "escaping reality". I could also say that what great authors do is "escape reality", yet you probably shouldn't say that makes them less "strong", or that religion makes people less strong, because there is a very good argument that's not true. Is going to work at your cubicle farm every day strong? Or is taking an axe into the wilderness and living off the land "strong"?

I think we should, for the purposes of this discussion, stick to the term "intoxication" rather than "escaping reality", because "reality" can be too slippery of a term (and so can "strong").

There are MMORPG players so into it they forget to eat, and actually die.

You say that as if it were a bad thing.

If you click a few levels through the story, you'll find that the data comes from Sandvine, whose customers are the big telecoms. Considering the battle over net neutrality, I'd say that Sandvine is not a neutral source in this discussion.

I'd like to see data from some other sources on "Netflix and Youtube are half of all Internet traffic".

Russia's probably worried that gay people will use their smartphones to hook up with all the gay Russian athletes.

It's kind of interesting to see such a large and relatively modern society lose it's collective mind over gay people.

One of the things that cause people to curb their drinking is that morning after hangover.

That is absolutely so. I haven't been drunk since shortly after college and it's because I hate how it makes me feel the next morning.

I don't know about the rest of the comment though. I don't quite understand why people feel that intoxicants are inherently bad. I don't use them, but I don't share the moral objection to them.

If someone can use an intoxicant and still manage their life in a way that is satisfactory to them, I don't believe that society needs to place artificial strictures on intoxicating substances.

Actual piracy, perhaps, but I've never understood the justification to applying all of this to a kid at home downloading a shitty rap album. Who is getting funded by the money he or she isn't giving anyone for the download?

We shouldn't so readily dismiss a nation-wide postal service. There should remain some basic, affordable, simple way to communicate across the nation and get things delivered. Either because you aren't able to receive net access, net access goes down across large regions of the country, you're old and crazy, or... whatever. I just think it needs to be reigned in. There do not need to be deliveries six days per week to every single address. Waiting up to 5 days for something when it is so ridiculously cheap is not unreasonable and if you need something overnight or guaranteed (other than junkmail), there are plenty of other premium services out there (and run at a profit).

I think closing libraries, DMV, and other services overnight and on weekends is strange.

The USPS isn't subsidizing junk-mail. Junk-mail is subsidizing the USPS. In other words, there is not enough demand for the service the USPS provides, so they have to rely on providing a service that citizens DO NOT WANT to remain in existence. Cut back expenses by delivering once per week, increase postage prices for letters to 400% ($2 for a letter to get across the country in a couple days would still be a fantastic deal), and stop jamming people's mailboxes up with junkmail that they don't want. Otherwise, maybe it is time to revisit the service, in its entirety.

I don't even look at my mail, anymore. I reach my h and in, pull it out, dump it into the trash basket right inside the door. I don't even go through to see if there is anything important. It's big packs of coupons, big papers full of advertisements, catalogs, flyers, campaign bullshit, charity spam, lots of stuff for people who lived here the twenty or thirty years before me, and so on. . . . after a certain point, I just got tired of the bullshit. It goes straight into the trash. If it was something vital or time-sensitive, you probably would have sent it to me in another form or by courier.

I think the postal service is something valuable to retain across the country, but I certainly don't think it needs to be delivered to every address six times per week. There are countless other methods for contact and delivery in the modern world that are superior to and preferable to the USPS. I think delivering mail to every address ONCE per week is entirely reasonable. You can have a cheaper, slimmer, smaller organization and still get people what they need (if, for some reason, they require USPS service) every week.

Also, the only thing the USPS does for me is deliver physical spam to my door that I have to clean out by taking out of the box and dumping it in the trash every week.