

Humanity wasted 14,526 years watching Gangnam Style - gillyb
http://wastedhumanity.com/9bZkp7q19f0

======
bradwestness
It's only "wasted" if you got no value out of it. If you thought it was
entertaining (which, presumably people who watched it many times did) then
it's no more of a waste than time spent listening to The Beatles or Beethoven,
relative merits aside.

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darkchasma
I hate the arrogance and pretence of this site as a concept. I'm far more
productive than pretty much anyone I know, but I also need downtime to
recharge.

~~~
kailuowang
It's not about productivity. Humanity could spend these 14,526 years listening
to J.S. Bach, a genius whose talent found no match in the human history and
yet dedicated as much as humanly possible of his life to music.

~~~
npsimons
I love Bach; love, love, _love_ Bach. Both of Gould's recordings of Goldberg
variations, plus the Kimiko Ishizaka recording from the Open Goldberg
Variations project (early backer).

That said, Gagnam style brought a smile to my face and added a bounce to my
step; there's room for many things in culture and not all time is wasted, even
"downtime". I'm sure Bach took breaks too.

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tzury
Spent, not wasted.

If you think Pop culture is a _waste_ , then why not calculate 90%+ of YouTube
multiple by # of views, time people spent in front of the television since its
existence, as well as movies, Facebook, twitter, Instagram, Computer games,
etc.

In fact, most of the time and bandwidth being spent on "The Internet" is a
waste - according to this theory.

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digitalboss
From 3/07/12 - Nearly 6 Million Years of World of Warcraft Healthy for
Players' Brains

By one analyst's calculation, the 11 million or so registered users of the
online role-playing fantasy World of Warcraft collectively have spent as much
time playing the game since its introduction in 2004 as humanity spent
evolving as a species-about 50 billion hours of game time, which adds up to
about 5.9 million years.

[http://kotaku.com/5891421/nearly-6-million-years-of-world-
of...](http://kotaku.com/5891421/nearly-6-million-years-of-world-of-wacraft-
healthy-for-players-brains)

~~~
npsimons
Huh. This started ringing some bells, and sure enough, there was a previous HN
thread on similar topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4624090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4624090)

TLDR my response: don't be so judgmental.

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otikik
That also means that some bad people spent less time doing bad things because
of Gangnam Style.

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infocollector
Assuming a 80 year life span, and 5 billion humans, that is only .00001% of
their life span. I hope we do better with the rest?

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T-hawk
Well, this analysis simplistically does length times views, deliberately
ignoring the fact that hardly all Youtube "views" go for the full duration.
Youtube has analytics that will show an average watching duration of 1-2
minutes for most music videos.

And of course there's opportunity "cost". Presumably a fair fraction of that
14,000 years just replaced watching other Internet videos or other inanity
instead. It's not like we'd reclaim 14,000 years of productivity by never
having had Gangnam.

And people multitask, watching a video in one window while doing something
else. Or just play it in the background for the music, not even watching the
video. We wouldn't count every Winamp or iTunes play of the song as the same
wasted time.

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Scienz
These are kind of false comparisons. It's comparing _man-years_ spent watching
Gangnam Style against _years_ spent building the Taj Mahal. There's a huge
difference. Divide the number of years given by the population of planet Earth
to get the number of years the entirety of humanity wasted on Gangnam Style
(it's something like 0.00000207 years - off by 11 orders of magnitude). Or
multiply the number of people who built the Taj Mahal by the number of years
they spent building it to get the number of man-years they spent. I'd guess
around 1,000 people built the Taj Mahal. That's 21,000 man-years, even more
than was spent watching Gangnam Style.

Of course, if you added all the numbers for all the stupid youtube videos,
memes, worthless news articles, facebook posts, etc. together, then you'd
probably get something terribly depressing. My guess is some tiny fraction of
humanity actually sustains the rest of the species. They are the (much less
than) 1%.

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NicoJuicy
And now a little more discussing it ;)

~~~
flipstewart
I came here to say the same thing, so it seems we're both guilty of it as
well.

~~~
NicoJuicy
I didn't even read his article... , already spent to much time on Gagnam Style
;)

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cliveowen
I didn't see it!

People are also amazed when I tell them I haven't seen Avatar, Lord of the
Rings and Harry Potter. I guess I'm just different than most people.

~~~
LanceH
Yea, but you're the same as all the other people who feel the need to point
out they have no tv and didn't see Star Wars.

~~~
cliveowen
I haven't seen Star Wars (and neither did any of my friends) but I own 3 TVs.
I watch a shitload of TV shows.

~~~
jaredsohn
This article (and the phenomenon it descibes) is likely why the GP mentioned
people who don't have TVs: [http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-
constantly-mention...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-
mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/)

So if you want to determine how much time you have 'wasted' related to the
video, add up the time spent saying how you haven't seen it.

Edit: There is no anger involved, other than maybe a little at being called
angry. :) It is just pointing out an aspect of the human condition. (I stopped
watching TV for a few years around the time this article came out and this
article gave me some extra self awareness.)

------
16s
The world is all about trivialities today and escapism (let's not face
reality). Especially in the West. Young men and women (in general) don't
really mature until their mid 30s and some never do.

We have an entire generation of people distracted every 30 seconds by fart
apps, juvenile videos and self-photos in the bathroom. We need more engineers,
doctors and lawyers and serious thinkers.

Maybe I'm just getting older, but that's my honest opinion.

~~~
tinco
You have a terribly misinformed honest opinion. Maybe you should go out more?

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StevenXC
> The Empire State Building took only two years to build.

Um, the site is counting man-hours for YouTube videos, but I know there was
more than just one guy working on the Empire State Building.

According to Wikipedia, there were 3,400 workers on the project, so the
correct comparison would be 14,526 years to 6,800 years. And I bet I had a lot
more fun adding my 15 minutes to Gangnam Style than I'd have adding 15 minutes
to build the Empire State Building.

------
lazylizard
they're entitled to their opinion thats its 'wasted'. but really. wise enough
to decide for other people how their time is best spent? is time spent being
entertained wasted? or is time being entertained by gangnam style wasted but
say, time reading 'in search of lost time' not?

------
buro9
Today I went to the loo, it took... say 90 seconds.

I'm betting that everyone on Earth went to the loo today, and also averaged 90
seconds.

Humanity wasted 19,889 years shitting today.

It took only 21 years to build the Taj Mahal in India!

What a waste.

~~~
NAFV_P
I spend longer than 90 seconds to pinch a loaf. I also tend to daydream while
I'm perched on the porcelain throne, often about data structures.

While we're on the subject, you might find this article entertaining:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groom_of_the_Stool](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groom_of_the_Stool)

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genofon
a bit arrogant as other people point it out but also makes a wrong comparison!
WW1 lasted six years but the time wasted was much more, multiply it by the
number of people involved (the soldiers alone were 68 millions) and the time
spent on reconstruction and you got a much higher value, in the order of
hundred of millions years.

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throwmeaway2525
Maybe, but what is the effect of singing, dancing, and laughter on humans?

Not to mention building cultural bridges...

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grecy
Time enjoyed is not time wasted.

After all, what is the point of the time we have, other than to enjoy it?

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mgkimsal
cute, but also assumes no multitasking.

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hkmurakami
We may have increased productivity thereafter. I know I did! ;)

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clearfont
man years is more appropriate

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iamjustin
The comparison to completion time of the Empire State Building, the Great
Pyramid of Giza, etc, are dishonest. Those weren't completed by a single
individual, so it doesn't make sense to compare it to all time spent by each
person watching the video.

~~~
dfritsch
I was thinking the same thing. First one I saw was for the Eiffel Tower, which
took __300 people __2 years, so that should actually show as 600 years, not 2.

~~~
fastball
Not to mention the time required to design it, the time spent by workers to
collect the raw materials used to build it, the time spent in factories to
produce a finished metal product that could be used in construction, etc.

Attempting to calculate the man-hours that went into almost any project of
scale is absurd. There are far too many factors to consider.

