I'm a #balloonboy addict

Hi. My name is Tech Talks and I'm an addict.

I've been using the internet for the best part of 16 years and I just can't give it up.

It's an expensive habit - it costs me around $70 a month just to connect and all the gadgets I use to get my fix have cost me thousands more.

But I just don't have the willpower or the desire to give up.

In fact, I would't even be here if Mrs Tech Talks hadn't made me come along today to try and get some help.

She reckons 10 hours a day is an unreasonable time to be connected to cyberspace but I don't buy it.

I just don't think it's harmful. It's not like it's a gateway to anything harder.

And it's legal. I can get my bandwidth from legitimate companies who make money doing this sort of thing.

Oh, and did I mention it was completely and utterly awesome?

Take the saga of the balloon boy, for example. Or #balloonboy as he's become known on the Twitterverse.

Before I'd even seen a news story from 'traditional media' about his apparent floating away I was being kept up to date by thousands of like-minded addicts tweeting out of their minds.

In fact balloon boy became probably the quickest internet meme of all time.

Less than 60 minutes after the (false) rumours that six-year-old Falcon Heene had gone for a ride reminiscent of Disney Pixar's latest classic Up there was a battlefield of opinions available for everyone to read.

The first sign this was taking off (pun intended) was when I got the following tweet.

"Hold on Balloon Boy, imma let you finish, but Amelia Earhart had one of the best disappearances in flight of all time!"

What? You don't get it? It's a reference to Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift at the MTV awards.

What do you mean you agree that I'm spending too much time on the intertubes?

(Ooh, look at this shiny website all about that meme.)

And then there were the t-shirts, like this one, or this one. And the website. And this was all up before he'd even been found unharmed in a box in his attic.

Okay, it's a little bit sick. And there were lots of people tweeting that it was sick.

But is it wrong to admit I laughed a little at the Kanye West thing?

And I swear I only did it because I knew he wasn't on the balloon in the first place and that he would be found alive.

And I only knew that because a Facebook friend and I had a chat about the Mythbusters episode when they tried to get someone to take off with helium balloons and it took 3,500 to even get them off the ground a little bit.

A quick calculation showed there was no way a small balloon like that could carry a kid's weight and fly like it did. Honestly.

Sorry. I get a little carried away when I'm talking about the internet. I'll take a breath now.

What do you mean I need to get a life?