A text link is a tease. A paragraph with link colors on intriguing words tantalizes with the promise of interesting, entertaining, or novel content on the other side of the link. Rarely is that promise fulfilled (so many links lead internally to other posts on the same site, or to a Wikipedia article), but just enough gems exist to make encounters with linked paragraphs a little bit more exciting.

You might say that the grass is always greener on the other side of the link. (If you’re a golfer, make that, “the other side of the links”. Sorry.) I guess that’s why so many spam emails include links.

Personally, I dislike losing my train of thought, and don’t like back-paging to get to my starting point again, so I open new links in new tabs (not spam email links, however). Which means that I frequently have 10 or 20 Firefox tabs open at once. Which means I am putting a lot of pressure on my computer’s RAM resources. Which means that my link-following system is not perfect.