Humans, to a fault, are clutterbugs. We clutter our rooms with knickknacks and things that have little to no useful value. We clutter our backpacks with books, papers, and writing utensils we don't use or need. We clutter our minds with inane facts and useless knowledge.
And why do we do this? It's the pursuit of Niftiness.
Real life is not the only realm in which we find the pursuit of niftiness. Our computers quickly can become cluttered with little effort. One major agent of cluttering right now is the desktop pet craze. Ranging from little guys that aimlessly wander the desktop to sophisticated, artificially intelligent Dogz and Catz, desktop pets serve no useful purpose except the occasional vent of frustration (It's fun to spray a Dog with water or drop a sheep to see if it bounces on the taskbar) or affection (Petting a virtual Cat—awww...). Other things can clutter the desktop — Microsoft Plus! added the ability to change desktop icons and wallpaper en masse and billions of custom desktop themes can be founds on the internet in a moment of free time.
Desktops aren't the only target of clutter-itis. Too many homepages on the Web are merely clearinghouses for someone's niftiness collection, with animated GIF files, annoying Java applets, and every nonproductive effect under the sun to be found somewhere. Too many people feel the need to add as many nifty features to their corner of cyberspace, and the niftiness spreads.
I have to admit that I too have been prone to cave in to niftiness. Last week, I added a POP3 server (like hecky or merle) to my own website for no purpose other than to add to my email address collection (it put me over fifty now). There's no usefulness in being mikelietz@mikelietz.ml.org, but there's one valid reason I did it.
It's nifty.
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