Jezebel's March Madness 2015: Internet vs. IRL Starts NOW!

Get ready to start using that sexy little brain of yours, because March Madness 2015: Internet vs. IRL is about to commence. I’m your host, the very cool and knowledgeable one who didn’t really get how brackets worked until today.

Every year, Jezebel’s March Madness extravaganza attempts to parse the dividing issues of our time, and this March, no two concepts seemed riper for a little healthy competition than the World Wide Web and the World Wide…World. The Internet is a wonderful resource, and one you can access without putting on pants. But! The Internet can’t hug you. The Internet can’t give you vitamin D. You can’t give a box of Internet to your kids one day.

Within our four divisions (the Internet Social Division, the Internet Antisocial Division, the IRL Social Division, and the IRL Antisocial Division), there are some “Cinderellas”—for example, over in IRL Social, “Getting Punched In The Face” is technically ranked far below “Attending Other People’s Weddings.” But that’s a toss-up if I’ve ever seen one!

You can play along at home with our printable bracket (click to expand), or just wait for other people to decide who will advance without keeping track of what’s going on! Makes no difference to us!

It’s Day 1, which means, if we are to believe my editor, that the top “seeds” face off against their bottom counterparts. (“Is this a gardening reference?” I asked Erin. “Words can have more than one meaning,” she explained.)

First up from the Internet Social Division:

GChat (1) battles it out with Reply All (16). Will GChat’s light procrastination service take the crown, with its healthy mashup of friends, coworkers, friendly ex-boyfriends, and weirdos you interned with five years ago? Or will you choose instead to hit “reply all,” that fun little inclusivity device that says,”You know what? This email is so on-point, I’d like to share it with the group.” Your call, people!

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Next, we’ve got Internet Antisocial Division:

Netflix (1) faces off against Facebook Reminding You To Wish Your Dead Friends “Happy Birthday” (16). This is a tough one, folks! Are we gonna choose the ‘flix, which we lovingly access via our roommate’s mom’s account to watch old episodes of Spartacus: Vengeance when we’re hungover and sad and also a little bit horny? Or are we leaning towards death? Cast your vote now!

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Moving on to IRL Social Division:

Sex (1), that scary thing that Spartacus does sometimes, braces for the next phase in its eternal tug-of-war with, obviously, Meetings (16). Hey, this may sound like an easy choice, but I dunno–what beats getting to look your coworkers straight in their beady little eyes? What beats getting to say things like, “Let me just piggyback off Carol and say how proud I am of everything we’ve accomplished this quarter, everybody take a cupcake!” YOU DECIDE.

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Lastly, we’ve landed in the IRL Antisocial Division:

Binge Watching (1) dukes it out with Guys Who Take Their Dicks Out On The Subway (16). Sure, watching the entire season of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt in one sitting without blinking or taking a bathroom break is one hell of a treat, but you know what else is great? Fresh air on that D! Who will come out on top?