The poetry of useless
I flinched again as a new Medium notification appeared and decided to finally look at it. My newsfeed was like this:
- 7 Habits You Need To Give Up To Be Successful
- 5 Easy Steps To Write A Book
- The Simple Habit That Can Change Your Life
- Want To Become The Best At What You Do? Read This.
- 5 Life Tips from a 22 Year Old Multimilliarder
… and so on. And I finally realized why I was avoiding this place.
Most of all these life tips, career advice and personal growth shit is just another form of procrastination. It gives you the feeling that you are actually doing something, moving somewhere, with this catchy easy-peasy 5 step guide, Written With Significance And Importance. And the small, but visible gap between this and real stuff makes me shiver, as from an instant draught of cool air.
I formed this newsfeed by myself. I was rushing to the content which promised me immediate benefits and was as demanding as a chewing gum. I was overlooking the rare stories of real experiences and ideas coming along my way, as I can’t immediately apply them to my life and take some benefit from them. They weren’t immediately useful.
Writers respond to demand, using personal stories as a frosting on the very same easy-steps, immediate-benefit structure. Everything is turning in the chewing gum, into the same kind of instantly likeable content which gives you an illusion that you just did something good with your life.
But sometimes you ought to be a human being and not a success-chasing bot.
Sometimes the reality just doesn’t fit.
Ant at some point everything useful and practical goes under the ground.
And the useless, random, misplaced, incoherent, sensitive, irrational, true stands out as the only thing that gives the meaning to it all.
