Urban Dictionary defines it as “information that serves no purpose and consumes valuable space in your head.”
Infoporn. My brain is full of it. Between innumerable websites vying for my attention each day, TV, music, other thoughts my brain likes to fill itself with, I fear if osmosis doesn’t take over and some of it starts leaking out, the pressure might very well cause my skull to fracture.
The information that’s available out there with a mere entry into the search field in Google is beyond overwhelming. I mean, I remember doing a project with a friend in high school where we had to use the internet, and I didn’t even know how. Now I wouldn’t know how to find the location of the nearest grocery store without Googling it. Ugh.
The only way to brain survival is just to let all but the most valuable run straight through without more than a cursory glance. Honestly, though, sometimes useless information is just so all absorbing.
Like comfort work. It’s work you do when you don’t want to do what you should actually be doing. Like dusting or straightening the apartment or making a loaf of banana bread. You trick yourself into thinking you’re being more productive than you are in order to cope with the procrastination.
Useless information lets you trick yourself into thinking you’re really getting smarter instead of the reality that is getting stupider. Ah, what a world we live in. Can’t we just go back to the simpler days? Maybe I should move to the Amazon to live in a hammock in the trees and swing with the monkeys. Nah. That’d be under stimulating.
Life is all about balance and living with the swinging of the pendulum.