My Favorite Thing on the Internet™
I have always been a fan of the phrase “My Favorite Thing on the Internet.” More often than not, it compels the disinterested to engage; it distinguishes “just another video” or “just another article” as something mystical, something that stands out from the Internet’s infinity of other videos and articles. Further, being conscious about what you enjoy the most on the Internet allows you to make the most of your wasted time online.
For years, MFTOTI was Rives’ TED talk on “The Museum of Four in the Morning.” With fewer than a quarter-million views, the video is, as Benjamin Franklin would say, “like silver in the mine.” Within, Rives (one of the few good modern poet-storytellers) recounts how he was sucked into the mystery of why 4:00 am is a scapegoat hour for dramatic events.
After watching it for the first time, I, like Rives, began to hear “four in the morning” everywhere I went. When friends would unknowingly mention the phrase, I would whip out my phone or laptop and force them to watch the talk: all fourteen minutes, without skipping or speeding up.
The average viewer makes it to about the six minute mark before losing focus and petitioning to turn it off. Yet, I respond with “This is My Favorite Thing on the Internet,” and they are magically seduced by the video. When the final eight minutes conclude, they are, more often than not, pleased.
Last spring, Rives was displaced by David Grann from The New Yorker, as I had stumbled upon my new Favorite Thing on the Internet: “The White Darkness.” The article follows the heroic journey of Henry Worsley, a British military officer, as he criss-crosses Antartica over the past decade. At over 20,000 words (or 100 manuscript pages), the article takes about an hour to read. In fact, it is so long that Grann is reformatting it into a book on its own, accompanied by images of Worsley’s (and his Antarctic predecessors’) journeys.
On the far other end of the depth spectrum, there is Twitter.
According to the Battery section on my iPhone, in my last week on the app, I spent eight hours with Twitter on screen. That is thirty-two Museums of Four in the Morning. Eight White Darknesses. More than a university problem set!
Earlier this week, I remembered “The White Darkness” and the joy it gave me to read it for the first time. It seemed incomparable: the emotional journey of an Antarctic hero born 100 years too late versus the superficiality of Twitter. If I wanted to optimize my wasted time on the Internet, I thought, I should dump Twitter and begin scouring The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Medium, and other long-form publishers.
So that’s what I did. I deleted the Twitter app off my phone (alongside all other social media), and I blocked the website on my laptop. The past six days since doing so has been my longest break from Twitter in two years. I’ve been reading three or four long-form pieces a day, and although I haven’t yet found a new Favorite Thing, I’m on the right track.
Everyone wastes time on the Internet. But being explicit about what you love will drive you to alter your behavior to find more of it. It’s not a perfect strategy, but it’s better than endlessly scrolling on Twitter, looking for nothing in particular.