Could I do it? Yes I could, and what I learned may surprise you. Out there beyond the computer screen there was a whole world of wonders I'd been neglecting. Magical things and special people. Interpersonal relationships that had gone neglected due to the deceptive ease and covert evil of the Internet. My week of electronic liberation showed me a better, brighter world I know I will never leave.

I spend a lot of my time thinking about the Internet and Internet addiction. Hell, I even wrote a serialized novella about it -- which I've adapted into a full length novel, lubed and ready to be inserted into commerce. (It's filled with great metaphors just like that too.) But recently, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and go offline for a week. That's right. One week with no personal email, social media or Internet use of any kind.

5 You Can Live Without Internet Porn





The Internet has changed the world, and perhaps in no way more startling and relevant to Cracked writers and readers than in its revolution of pornography. There's a whole world out there of headshakingly, awful, diverse and God-forsaken smut with varying degrees of quality. And it's all free. Well, not all of it, but I shudder to think what people are paying for that they can't find being given away for nothing. It's no surprise that the absence of online porn was my first stumbling block on the road to breaking my Internet addiction.

But here's the thing. Did you know that you can get porn even without the Internet? It's true. Although I can't imagine why, there are still magazines and DVDs of people doing things to each other while not wearing clothes, sometimes with the assistance of various devices. You can even buy some of these magazines at newsstands, stationery stores and, for some reason, airports. Don't be fooled by the brown paper bag they sometimes come in. Underneath? Boobies! No joke.

Getty



Don't worry. This isn't the sexy part.

Another thing about these magazines. Don't make the same mistake I did. They don't work like a flip book. They're just filed with stationary dirty pics of different naked people. Flipping the pages fast at the corners won't animate it.

For that, you need to buy a DVD. No, I didn't just misspell "download." A DVD is an actual disc like a compact disc. Oh, um, how can I explain? Like a really flat doughnut that doesn't taste good, but shows you images of people having sex?

Anyway, it's all still out there! And to think of all the anti-social time I spent alone in a darkened room, hunched over a keyboard when I could have been out and part of the community, buying unspeakable smut from lovely, recent immigrants in brightly lit Times Square stores.



