So the other day, one of my coworkers starts laughing about how there’s this video out there, two somewhat-scantily clad women with tinfoil-wrapped boxes on their heads, doing a choreographed “dance” to Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.
Then it hit me.
Someone — namely these two people — had to spend a considerable amount of time creating this. Thinking up the idea, practising it, filming it (with however many takes to get through the mistakes and undoubted laughter), and editing it.
Then it really hit me.
How much of the stuff out there is a complete waste of time?
Maybe this is just me. Lately, I feel as if I’ve got almost no time at all. I get up, I go to work, run myself ragged all day, sprint home to spend (maybe) 90 minutes with my child before bedtime (including feeding the Wee One while eating myself, and sometimes making dinner), then make up the last couple of hours trying to tie of other things that need doing. And back to bed. Rinse. Repeat.
No video. No fancy dance routines. No costumes. I’m lucky to listen to music in the spare minutes at work. Where the heck do people get time for this stuff?
Examples that come to mind:
- Diet Coke and Mentos
- LOLCats
- Let’s give a conservative estimate of 80% of Youtube, to name but one of many such sites
- People who write really long blogs that really mean nothing
By “useless”, I mean “adding no significant difference to the advancement of human knowledge”. Given, my definition. But the point’s the same: how much of the stuff out there on the ‘net is actually useful?
For the record, I count myself in the list of useless — most of this website (with a few notable exceptions, which seem to regularly show up on the popular posts lists) is useless. (It could even be argued that most of my job is useless by the same token, but I’m not going to go there right now, since that will get me very depressed.)
So, the question is asked, and I’m curious to know what others think: How much is useless?
