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Not news, it's an opinion piece from The Atlantic that made me smile. Take it fwiw.
Toilet theory isn’t necessarily literal, of course. Mindless scrolling isn’t limited to the bathroom, and plenty of idle or bored swiping happens during other down moments—while waiting in line or sitting in gridlocked traffic. Right now, somebody somewhere is probably reading an article or liking an Instagram post with a phone in one hand and an irritable infant in the other.
The toilet theory is mostly a reminder to myself that the internet is a huge place that is visited countless times each day by billions of people in between and during all the mundane things they have to do. As a writer, I use this framework to check my ego and remember that I have precious little time to hook a reader with whatever I’m trying to get them to read—but also that my imagined audience of undistracted, fully engaged readers is an idealized one. I’m distracted just like everyone else: Sometimes I read deeply, but the majority of my nonwork surfing involves inattentively scrolling through clicky articles to find the morsel that catches my eye, or pecking out some typo-riddled phrase about a home-improvement product into Google while walking from the parking lot into Lowe’s and nearly getting hit by a vehicle.
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The Toilet Theory of the Internet
Allow me to explain my toilet theory of the internet. The premise, while unprovable, is quite simple: At any given moment, a great deal of the teeming, frenetic activity we experience online—clicks, views, posts, comments, likes, and shares—is coming from people who are scrolling on their phones in the bathroom.Toilet theory isn’t necessarily literal, of course. Mindless scrolling isn’t limited to the bathroom, and plenty of idle or bored swiping happens during other down moments—while waiting in line or sitting in gridlocked traffic. Right now, somebody somewhere is probably reading an article or liking an Instagram post with a phone in one hand and an irritable infant in the other.
The toilet theory is mostly a reminder to myself that the internet is a huge place that is visited countless times each day by billions of people in between and during all the mundane things they have to do. As a writer, I use this framework to check my ego and remember that I have precious little time to hook a reader with whatever I’m trying to get them to read—but also that my imagined audience of undistracted, fully engaged readers is an idealized one. I’m distracted just like everyone else: Sometimes I read deeply, but the majority of my nonwork surfing involves inattentively scrolling through clicky articles to find the morsel that catches my eye, or pecking out some typo-riddled phrase about a home-improvement product into Google while walking from the parking lot into Lowe’s and nearly getting hit by a vehicle.
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