Your general knowledge

Thanks to your Internet addiction, you know about a lot of obscure stuff. You've seen a lot of obscure stuff. You've heard a lot of obscure stuff. You've sent links to other people that impressed them because they were introduced to whatever hilarious and/or shocking picture/article/video/song through you. But somehow, despite all this stuff that's packed into your head, you're not sure you have any real knowledge at all. In fact, you're not entirely sure what real knowledge is anymore. You vaguely remember that somewhere in your past, learning involved some process of studying one topic in depth so that you could converse about it in a linear, educated fashion with another person who'd studied that same topic. But now, as far as you're concerned, learning just means you've read an entire Wikipedia article straight through.

To stock up on fraudulent knowledge, you should spend most of your time on sites that bring the most interesting parts of the Internet to you, like Reddit or Digg. If you're not quite cool enough to know about those sites, visit some lamer buzzy sites, like Yahoo! news or MSN's homepage. You'll see the cat who can do a backflip into a box two weeks later than the cooler people, but at least you'll see it. And when that inevitable two-second conversation comes up, in which someone asks if you know about the cat who can do a backflip into a box, you can triumphantly say yes. Yes, you know about it. And speaking of cats, has the other person heard about that colony of death cats in Borneo that dominate wild dogs and make tools out of coat hangers? No? Well, there's a colony of death-related cats that dominate wild dogs, somehow, in Borneo. Also, they apparently can make tools out of coat hangers. Well, holy shit, that's amazing, the other person will say. When you hear this response, you can pat yourself on the back for being such a worldly person.

Unfortunately, to make your fraudulent knowledge functional, you can't have friends who visit the same buzz sites as you do on a regular basis, because instead of being able to start every conversation with, "Have you heard about...?" in that slightly smarmy way, you'll have too many conversations that go, "Did you read about the...?" "Yeah, I read it this morning." "Oh, my god, but did you see the...?" "Yeah, I just saw that." "Jesus." "Yeah." Then both of you will sit around feeling like failures, and the only way you'll be able to make yourself feel better will be to go and find some elderly people on a bench to impress with your stories about death cats who make tools.