Spent my lunch hour helping setup Culture Week at my daughters’ elementary school.
At the exact second of this writing, Justin Bieber’s youtube video Baby has 551,203,470 views.
The song is 3 minutes 45 seconds long.
Assuming all views were complete multiplying the view count by 3.75 gives 2,067,013,010 minutes. Divide by 60 (minutes/hour) gives 34450216.8 hours. Divide further by 24 (hours/day) gives 1435425.7 days. Divide again by 365 (approximate days/year) gives us 3932.67315.
That’s slightly less than 4,000 years of human history spent watching a Justin Bieber video.
Ok, even if my math is correct, the metric has some problems. Regardless, that says to me,
- That’s a lot of time spent passively, not actively.
- Views on YouTube, hits on a web page, and retweet counts may not be a good measure of what is important.
No judgement and nothing against Mr. Bieber. The Beatles probably would have had as many views. However, if we wish to have an impact on human history, maybe we can think about giving our time more meaningfully.
Just a thought.
Give Our Time 